


Dave is a Genie.

by Samsinater



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adventure?, Alternate Universe - Magic, Dry Humor, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-03-18 17:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 77,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3578283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samsinater/pseuds/Samsinater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fic which merely attempts the answer the question, "What if there existed a Homestuck AU where magic was not fake as shit?"</p><p>Now presented in <em><span class="aradia">f</span><span class="tavros">a</span><span class="sollux">b</span><span class="nepeta">u</span><span class="kanaya">l</span><span class="terezi">o</span><span class="vriska">u</span><span class="equius">s</span> <span class="gamzee">T</span><span class="eridan">e</span><span class="feferi">c</span><span class="aradia">h</span><span class="tavros">n</span><span class="sollux">i</span><span class="nepeta">c</span><span class="kanaya">o</span><span class="terezi">l</span><span class="vriska">o</span><span class="equius">r</span><span class="gamzee">!</span></em></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Little Introduction Never Hurt Anyone

Magic is real.

Few believe it, fewer have any reason to believe it, and it hardly operates under the principles its more avid human believers might insist, but it is very real.

Notably, magic is not a force, so much as a talent. This is not to say that anyone can learn to manipulate it, so much as it is _not_ the imperceptible permeating essence, ever-present and able to be drawn from, that some seem to believe it is. It is not a medium which requires wands, nor runes, nor spellbooks; in fact, it seldom requires much of anything beyond someone capable of wielding it, and the will to do so. One might further clarify this to convey that magic itself is more of an applied reconfiguration of reality, a work of skill which requires focus and dedication in order to actually accomplish anything, let alone yield the desired effect -- but beyond this, all valid definitions breach semantics, which absolutely no one sane would enjoy hearing about.

Also of note is that, among the select minority of beings in existence who can use magic -- virtually none of whom want anyone else to actually believe they are real -- an astoundingly minuscule proportion of them are human. Several magical species possess a humanoid appearance, sometimes intentionally masquerading as humans themselves, but are not to be confused with the strictly-bipedal organisms they share a physical planet with.

And while few magical creatures hold any deep contempt for humankind, which to date outnumbers them by a ratio in the thousands, they also afford no incredible respect. Individually, some are genuinely benevolent and compromising, while others love nothing more than to play their mischievous pranks, but on the whole their relationship is a mutually distant and neutral one. Very few governing bodies have been created by these entities of significant magical prowess, but among them are enough to prevent too much sporadic intervention -- for better and for worse.

Thus, life between the magically-attuned and the plainly-mortal has been moderate and peaceful for some time, leading all too many to the absurdly-incorrect presumption that it will remain that way.

\---

"Sir, could you please put your feet down? The tables are not foot rests." The speaker, a young male dressed in dark casual work attire, fidgeted slightly. A small tag indicated that his name was 'James,' and for an ordinary human, he looked the part.

James had been working this quaint café's cash register not ten seconds ago, but abandoned his post in favor of approaching the individual who had been consistently burping every thirteen seconds for the past four minutes, numerous other social crimes besides.

This was the same individual, in fact, whose legs were casually crossed over the table in front of him, so as to disrespectfully lean back in a matching metal and wood chair. In his hand was a glass of amber liquid, which smelled of cinnamon and apples, and on his pale face sat a plain pair of wide-rimmed sunglasses. His hair asserted itself as a wispy mess of curls and gentle tangles, all the color of bleached straw, and his outfit consisted of a black shirt, a crimson jacket, white shoes, and a faded pair of ripped-knee jeans. Altogether, his was an image of completely casual rebellion, particularly against the cashier fidgeting beside him.

The man -- who now sported a name tag which looked exactly like the tacky little strip on James' shirt, except for displaying 'Dave' in garishly red print -- seemed to consider the request for a long while. "Nah," he eventually concluded. A long, obnoxiously loud sip of his drink followed, preventing any followups for a solid fifteen seconds.

"Sir," James continued when the sipping finally ceased, daring to talk over the ensuing sounds of smacking lips. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Make me." The cashier apparently had not been expecting this response, and fidgeted again. "No really," Dave said, and swung his legs off the table to directly face the cashier. The lazy tone of his previous clipped responses suddenly gave way to a swift and energetic one. "I'll even make you an offer you can't refuse: if you can remove me from this building -- no, no no no; I'll do ya one better. If you can just _get me out of my chair,_ I will give you this," and the man produced a small green piece of paper,  "crisp hunnid dolla' bill and never return to this establishment in your lifetime."

James stared blankly at the money, and displayed bold uncertainty as to whether he was currently on a reality television show. He smiled nervously just in case.

"But if you can't," Dave continued, pulling the bill away, "my beautifully-sculpted ass is staying stay parked right here until I choose to leave. Deal?" A brief silence followed, and James looked around for any cameras as casually as possible -- which is to say, not very casually at all -- before he slowly nodded.

"Alright," Dave chuckled, and returned to his original lax sitting position. "Have at it."

James quickly realized he had no idea how to tackle this problem, but eyeing the piece of paper that was still alluringly existent in Dave's grip, he swallowed, placed both of his hands around the arm holding Dave's drink, gave a few tentative tugs first, just to be sure he was serious, and then pulled with all the strength he could muster.

Dave failed to be brought to the ground in a timely fashion, and it greatly demoralized the cashier within seconds.

Stubbornly, James gave another tug, then another, and then shifted his stance before pulling one more time. These attempts, too, failed to budge Dave any distance whatsoever. In fact, when Dave took another sip of his drink, his arm pulled James along with it, squeakily sliding his shoes along the floor.

"Jesus Christ dude. Do you even lift?"

By now many of the café's customers were watching the display, some of them quietly laughing at the cashier's absurdly ineffective attempts to eject Dave from his seat. James frowned, ignoring their derisive stares. He gave a snort of determination, quickly recollecting all of his resolve, and pulled one final time with twice the might as before -- until he landed flat on his ass as his hands very suddenly slipped off Dave's arm. Several louder bursts of laughter erupted, and Dave shook his head solemnly, looking down at the cashier with a crude approximation of pity. "Wow," he said mercilessly, and took a sip of his drink for improvised punctuation. "Not gonna lie, bromigo: that was spectacularly pathetic." The sad manner in which James pulled himself to his feet attested to this. "But a deal's a deal, bucko; better luck next time."

James resigned himself to the fact that maybe there was not any camera crew behind this, that maybe the man sitting impudently at that table was just a gigantic asshole, if one with a strangely, very suddenly slippery arm, but he figured that if a camera crew _was_ going to pop out and surprise him, it would do him best to return to his spot behind the cash register without unnecessary fuss.

His face lit up for a moment as a well-dressed woman stood up from her seat across the room, then fell as she failed to approach him, and fell even more as she approached the gigantic asshole instead, at which point James' immediate relevance to this story ended.

"Excuse me," the woman said once a short distance away from the man who lacked all but the most exotic forms of tact. He tilted his head towards her, a lone eyebrow peeking out over his sunglasses, and sipped his drink again.

"I've been looking for you, for quite a while actually," she carefully enunciated in a polite tone, and her immaculate appearance made Dave feel as though this was supposed to mean something to him.

Her hair was a much neater assortment than his, shimmering gold locks styled neatly and held in place with an ivory headband. Black lipstick on small lips pulled at his attention just as much as her dazzlingly violet eyes, and her attire as a whole was a difficult blend of onyx, lavender, and the occasional gold or silver accent along the edges. It was undeniably snazzy, but Dave refused to compliment her on it.

"Always glad to have a fan." Sip.

"Oh, I'm hardly a fan," she assured him with a dismissive wave. "A distant admirer, perhaps, but only in the vaguest and least romantic of senses." Sip. The woman smiled patiently. "I'll get to the point, then: I know you're a genie, and I am positively _delighted_ to have found you on such short notice."

"A what?" Dave asked dumbly, as though the glass he was drinking from had not been refusing to empty itself, besides containing a drink not available on the menu here.

"A genie," the woman restated calmly. "A shamefully forgetful one, apparently."

Dave remained silent, staring intently at the woman in front of him. He took an especially slow pull of his drink this time, and slurped at it noisily. The woman continued to smile patiently. "Alright," he finally said, "uh, lemme guess: you want a wish? Poof poof, sparkle sparkle, and then nothingness manifests itself more-or-less into whatever the fuck it is that you wished for?" He waggled his fingers past one another for effect.

"I do want a wish, actually; I hear genies are superbly keen on giving those out to the most foolishly unsuspecting of mortals who ask it of them." Dave nodded, because that was in fact a thing that happened with genies.

He pointed an accusatory finger at her. "You know, that is _exactly_ the kinda thing a mortal trying to entice a genie into attempting to fool said mortal, only to wind up ironically fooled _himself,_ would say to said genie." A pause followed as they met one another in a mutual understanding of dastardly purpose and intent.

"Okay," Dave said, and shrugged. "Sure. I'll humor you." The woman's eyes lit up expectantly at this, though they dimmed again when Dave said nothing for about ten seconds afterward, instead staring at an arbitrary point on the ceiling.

...Sip.

"Yeah," he said once he had swallowed with an obnoxious "ahh," and nodded to himself. "I'm feeling generous with my time today. Alright, you get... _one_ wish," Dave decided, pointing a single finger upwards in the woman's direction,  "so make it count; go."

"I wish for an infinite number of wishes," she said immediately. Dave, in turn, sighed immediately afterward, not only because he had been expecting that, but also because he thought this woman seemed reasonably intelligent, perhaps intelligent enough not to try that. He shook his head.

"Can't do that." Sip.

"And why not?"

"You blind? 'S quite clearly against the rules." A thin book, one conveniently labeled 'Rules, Guidelines, and Handy Suggestions For All Magical Beings to Abide By' subtly appeared in the woman's hands, open to an unmarked page somewhere toward the back. It featured several addendums, the most noticeable of which being the thrice-underlined, " **MORTALS MAY NOT WISH FOR INFINITE WISHES.** " It had been neatly circled several times in red ink, and as the woman looked down at it, another layer of ink appeared, circling it once more. "Every fuckin' time," Dave mumbled, and shook his head again.

"Alright," the woman said, and before Dave could feel bothered by how undeterred she sounded, she continued. "Then I would like to wish for a _finite_ number of additional wishes."

Dave blinked.

Then, because blinking was not an adequate means of expressing much of anything while wearing sunglasses, he frowned.

"You can't," Dave started, and then stopped, because that sentence had already boxed itself in. The woman raised an eyebrow. "That's not," he tried again, but got no further. Her patient smile persisted. "Now hold the fuck on; there is no goddamn way _you_ are the first..." Dave trailed off. After a moment, the rulebook snapped from Rose's hands into his.

He stared at it. He flipped through several pages, staring at each one as they flicked by in front of him, and then repeated the process back the way he came. He lifted his sunglasses for a moment, squinting, flicked through all the same pages one more time, and then replaced them as the pages went past for yet another go around, in case anything changed. Nothing did. "...Fuck," Dave muttered under his breath. "John is never gonna let me live this down."

"Specifically," the woman added, "I would like to wish for five additional wishes, if that changes anything." It did not.

Dave sighed again. The woman still smiled, though now she looked ever-subtly more smug than patient. "...What do I call you?" Dave asked, hesitant, looking shamefully up at her from his chair. The woman finally released the small grin her smile had been concealing.

"You may refer to me as your new Master -- or, should I say _Mistress_ \-- Rose Lalonde. I look forward to your service." Dave did not share the sentiment.  "We have a lot of work to do, genie, and you will be doing all the heavy lifting."


	2. A Lot of Work to Do

The sun was shining. At least, it was for the people who could see it.

In truth, the local gas giant typically shone regardless of whether it was visible; it just so happened that today, in this city, the sun was mostly unobscured by the tall buildings and patchy cloud cover, allowing everyone below to see it shining either directly into their eyes, or indirectly into their eyes.

Notably, of the few million humans occupying this rather large city, exactly six knew both what they were doing with their lives, and what they wanted to do with their lives. Among those six, however, only one had recently recruited a genie for their efforts, and so the human known as Rose Lalonde was in a highly unique position for her species.

After claiming her prize, a magical servant whom she could exploit for an indefinite number of extra wishes at any time, Rose had seen fit to leave the simple eatery she found him in, in order to pursue her whims, goals, desires, and so forth.

Being her servant, the genie was forced to follow, in case she made any wishes. This was one of the numerous obligations a genie had to anyone whose owed wishes exceeded zero, however it is important to understand that this was not because genies were particularly concerned with the welfare of their 'masters,' but because most humans who had recently come across a genie accidentally made stupid wishes on a daily basis.

In case it was not clear, being a genie means making a business out of playing pranks, twisting words around, and acting like an all-around scoundrel. There was exactly one genie Dave knew who was distinguishably better than himself at the game, but he could not be contacted for assistance for two very important reasons: firstly, Dave hated asking for help, especially with genie-related problems. He did not think himself totally above the act, but to request another's assistance in any magical matter whatsoever would have been the genie-equivalent of a human asking someone to aid them in breathing.

As for the second reason, even if Dave _had_ wanted help with resolving his current dilemma, a thick and tangled magical legal battle -- one which virtually no one could reasonably want any part of -- would have ensued the moment he requested it. It was, in short, a thoroughly inadvisable course of action.

And so it was that seconds turned to minutes as Rose and Dave walked and floated along, respectively, during which the silence between them slowly began to unnerve Rose. Having a complete stranger follow her around was a much more uncomfortable scenario than she had previously anticipated, especially with the whole 'floating beside her' thing; it was as though she was now being haunted, a thought further cemented by the complete lack of reactions from everyone on the sidewalk around her. She decided pointing this out might help to keep her sanity, and boldly went for it: "Shouldn't more people be taking notice of the fact that you're hovering along beside me?" she asked, quietly, trying her damnedest not to look or sound like a crazy person. 

Dave, in turn, sighed, and it was the sort of sigh that the average human adult might sigh were a child to ask them why Santa Clause had not come this year, despite how good they were, as the adult would immediately become aware of their obligation to either fabricate a new set of lies to occupy the child with, or to introduce their kid to the wonderfully terrible world of financial responsibility.

"The fuck do you think I am, a total novice of a genie who doesn't know how to hide himself while he's flying in public? ...You know what -- don't answer that; just know that I ain't, and that I am very much invisible to everyone except you."

"Of course; my intentions were not to offend," Rose stated impassively, a hand defensively drawn to her chest before falling away again as she tried to retain an inconspicuous public presence. "Although, I must admit," she continued with a guiltily-pleasured smile, "your intelligence seemed dubious at best after being outwitted so easily by little old mortally-crippled me."

"Alright, hold the fuck up; time out." Dave raised his hands, placing them perpendicular to one another in a 'T' shape, and at once, everything around them dramatically froze. Clouds high above ceased billowing in the wind; men and women of all walks of life stopped where they stood on sun-bleached sidewalks; a pigeon that had recently taken flight hung precariously in the air, wings outstretched in an incomplete flap; even the speeding cars, few though they were on this particular street, had come to an utterly soundless halt. All of it, every last visible object, was now entirely still.

In the wake of this expanse of soundless inaction, Dave moved before Rose, crossing his arms under his chin as he hovered stomach-down before her. "I didn't write the rules," he said, exasperation gently dripping from his words. "I'm just a law-abiding wish-granting motherfucker who you managed to catch in a teensy little loophole of 'em. I do what's expected of me as a genie; I pay my magical taxes and vote for the magical councils I don't even give a shit about, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't go insinuating that I'm a fucking moron just because the dudes who wrote one little rule book left out a single goddamned rule, and you were _just_ intelligent enough to take advantage of it."

Rose, who had up until this point looked only mildly stunned by her unmoving surroundings, focused on Dave as he came around to bear. "I... suppose that's understandable," she said idly when he finished his brief rant, but her eyes betrayed her words; they had already wandered off before she finished speaking, caught on something in the near distance, leading Rose to walk past several of the frozen men and women around her to approach it.

"...You may not wanna do that," Dave warned as his gaze followed Rose's, which was locked on what appeared to be a businessman's cellphone, held by what appeared to be a businessman.

"Why not?" Rose asked simply, a subtly perverse intent to take advantage of her unexpected-but-interesting new situation lurking in her voice, and made an attempt to pull the phone from the man's hand. Stubbornly, it yielded no movement whatsoever, and remained in the firm grip of the man.

"Well _first_ of all, you greedy little fuck," Dave expounded as he drew near,  "that guy's not real and neither's his phone. Secondly and in tune with the first, this ENTIRE PLACE ain't real, and in fact is just a convenient little extra-dimensional cubbyhole I brought you to while we chat; in other words, I'll be taking your deathly-curious human ass back outta here when we're done, something that'll happen at pretty much the same time as you disappearing in the real world."

Rose tried to cut in at this time, but Dave held up a hand before she could, an act which coincided with the head of a stop sign rudely appearing before her, albeit with the usual "STOP" replaced with "CAN IT". "Now, normally that's pretty hard to notice for anyone who's not paying attention -- and believe me when I say most humans aren't -- but it's significantly MORE noticeable when you, oh I dunno, move _twenty fucking feet_ away from where you were standing before. See, there's this little concept known as 'keeping a low profile' in the magical world; maybe you haven't heard of it, but jumping across large distances in the blink of an eye while in plain sight and shamelessly putting your grubby little hands on a dude's phone ain't in the general philosophy." Rose frowned at this, an act obscured from Dave by the sign, until it finally relented in its existence by shrinking into nothingness.

"That's hardly fair of you to warn me against so belatedly after bringing me here."

"Ain't got jack dick to do with fairness; genies ain't supposed to be fair. 'Sides, most humans are usually smart enough not to try moving when it looks like everything around them ALSO isn't moving; if you just happen not to have that survival instinct, that doesn't automagically make it my fault when you start groping random dudes and their belongings on the street."

Rose said nothing in response to this, decidedly undeterred in her efforts to inspect the man with the cellphone, who was in fact still not a man, but a molded shape of a man, constructed from a magical substance that most genies would simply refer to as 'hardened wax.'

"...If this place isn't real," Rose eventually probed, speaking slowly, "then why does it matter where I move? You can simply transport us back to where I was standing in the real world." Dave sighed and groaned in an awful, guttural combination of sound that conveyed absolutely nothing pleasant.

"It _matters_ because while I COULD go through all of the fucking calculations to figure out how to transport your ass _from_ here back to the spot where you were _there_ , right in that city on that planet in that galaxy and precisely nowhere the fuck else, it's a helluva lot EASIER to just take your position relative to where I put you in here and then plonk you down relative to where I took you from out there. Maybe you don't get why, being a cute little 'only sees three-dimensionally' human, but the way the magic's set up that is literally as efficient as it gets." Dave shook his head condescendingly. "And here I thought you might actually show some understanding of magic and its rules, Miss 'I Successfully Wished For More Wishes So I'm a Special Little Princess For It.'" Rose tried valiantly to suppress a smirk at this, and failed completely.

"You sound upset," she said placidly. Dave afforded her a wholly unamused look. "How about this, then, so we don't have to pinpoint the location I was standing previously: could you make me invisible to everyone else, like yourself? That way it wouldn't matter where you return me; no one would be able to see it." Dave seemed to consider this, stroking his chin and looking off in an arbitrary, upward direction, before nodding as his gaze returned to Rose.

"Yeah, I could do that," he affirmed nonchalantly.

Several moments passed, the two of them staring at each other in silence.

"...And will you?" Rose prodded. 

"Will I what?"

"Will you make me invisible?"

Dave smiled broadly. "Ah, see now that's the real question, ain't it? But the thing is, as a genie I am obligated to grant WISHES, not questions; you have to _wish_ for it if you want it to come true, dear Rosalina."

Briefly, Rose fought the urge to frown, and succeeded in dismissing it only after a small contour had already played across her lips. It occurred to her there that, while she had been looking for a genie for some time now, she had foolishly failed to fully prepare herself for all of the semantics that would inevitably follow. She took a breath.

"Alright, then," Rose said calmly, heaving a soft sigh before enunciating her next words carefully. "I wish to be..."

It was at this moment, as she hesitated to consider her phrasing, that Rose realized she had never officially put through her wish for five additional wishes and, further, had nearly been conned out of all of her wishes entirely. She remained silent as these thoughts came to pass, to which Dave slowly raised an eyebrow.

"You wish to be...?" he goaded, spinning his hands past one another. 

"...Actually, I wish for five more wishes."

"Fuck!" said Dave immediately, shaking a fist as he sank in the air. "Nearly had you." He pinched his right index finger and thumb together, menacingly holding both in Rose's direction. "I was _this_  goddamned close. Totally ready to just leave you permanently invisible, too; 's a classic lifelong prank. But you know what? Joke's on you motherfucker: I LIKE a challenge. ...Sometimes. Today's one of those times, is what I'm getting at."

Rose stared at Dave with a sardonic, wry smile, because he still had not granted her request for the extra wishes. Dave rolled his eyes at this, because silent mortals were the least fun sort of mortals he had ever encountered, and worse still, they always seemed to be perfectly aware of it.

Gracelessly, Dave snapped his fingers, and a small number appeared in the air above both of them, introduced by way of dazzling multicolored fireworks which shot out from behind it. "Happy fuckin' birthday to you," Dave said, and blew unenthusiastically into a previously-nonexistent party horn. "Five wishes."

"I would like to make it six wishes, actually, now that I've thought about it." Dave shook his head.

"Still gotta wish for it, y' indecisive little shit."

"Fine. I wish for one more wish." Dave snapped his fingers again, and the number briefly flickered, to a four of all things, before remaining a five. Rose, despite herself, felt cheated. "What the hell was that?"

"Rose, you just used a wish to get a wish. The fuck did you _think_ the net result was gonna be?"

Rose allowed herself a curt sigh, because _of course_ the genie was going to be a difficult jackass.  "I wish for _two_ more wishes," she corrected. This time, after Dave snapped his fingers again, the number ticked up to a six.

"Happy?"

"Decidedly not very. But, now that I have a buffer," she said, finally getting on with it, "I wish to be invisible, to..." Rose paused a moment, once again considering her phrasing as Dave looked on with subdued interest -- which he quickly modified to resemble active interest. For effect, he pulled a notepad out of nowhere in particular, scribbling on it with a pen produced from a similar location as he expectantly stared towards Rose. "...everyone but myself," she eventually concluded. "And you, I suppose, if that eliminates any undue problems you might experience as my genie."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Dave said with a dismissive wave, before finishing his crude drawing of a penis, and then throwing the notepad and pen away. His left hand ascended, and Dave decided to treat it like a gun: he pointed it at Rose, cocked his thumb, and said, "Bang," as it seemed to experience recoil. The floating six changed to a five, but no other visible change seemed to occur around them. Rose frowned.

"...It has occurred to me that I have no way of determining whether I am actually invisible without subjecting myself to the eyes of the public." Dave shrugged.

"Not my problem if you got trust issues."

"Very well. May we return to my birth-universe, then? I won't have to wish for that, too, will I?" Dave scoffed, and held a hand to his chest.

"You think I would be so much of an asshole as to put a sweet 'n' innocent little human girl in a pocket dimension, only to refuse to return her afterwards unless she wasted a wish on it? I mean, sure, there are no sweet or innocent human girls around right now, but I DO still happen to be a nice guy." Rose quirked an eyebrow at this, and in turn, Dave sighed, before adding in a dreary monotone, "It's also against the rules to force mortals into situations that they can only escape by wishing themselves out of it." Rose smiled and nodded.

"Why do you follow those rules, anyhow?" Dave, who had been about to return them both to their dimension of origin, was caught off-guard by this question.

"I already told you I'm a law-abiding genie. Technically, I'm more of a chaotic neutral than a lawful neutral, but it's true."

"And that's it? Some inherent sense of duty compels you not to do whatever you want, but only what a -- well, an obviously _incomplete_ collection of arbitrary rules tells you to?" A brief stare connected Dave's sunglasses to Rose's eyes, vaguely eerie in its abrupt execution, before he answered her.

"Alright, lemme put it this way -- and I'll even lay down some sick visuals for you to process this a little easier." Dave clapped his hands together, vigorously rubbed them, and then drew them apart, revealing a perfectly ordinary chessboard floating between them, complete with every piece in its starting position.

"When you play chess," he said, picking up one of the white pawns, "what's more satisfying? Following the rules and soundly defeating your opponent with mad reserves of strategy and skill..." The pieces flicked between several carefully-arranged states, each of them moving between snapshots of position until the black pieces had successfully overtaken the white. "...or just knocking away all the pieces for a cheap instant victory?" Dave swept the hand across the board, knocking aside every remaining piece, before he set down the pawn, which was now a king. A pensive look crossed Rose's face, but the question required no serious thinking.

"See," Dave continued, "I very easily COULD just say 'fuck it' and do whatever the hell I want -- and I usually do anyway, but only within the confines of the rules; otherwise there's no structure or lasting fun in winning, 'cause what the hell's the point of playing a game of your own design when nobody's a valid opponent? 'S like that metaphor you humans have about taking candy from a baby. Is it easy? Sure. Fun? If you're the sadistic type. But satisfying? Hell fuckin' no; not even close." A brief period of thought-provoking silence passed, after which Rose nodded again.

"So, then, it would not be too far-fetched to say that you treat your life like a game?" Dave gave a prim nod, and a compact grin. "...Hm. I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Now, if you wouldn't mind returning me to Earth?"

Dave obliged, waving in a single arc across the whole of their surroundings, and the pocket dimension seamlessly faded away around them. The representations of everyone and everything were replaced by their originals; people resumed walking, voices could be heard again, and a very slight wind was apparent after being absent for so long. Many individuals quickly halted their movements in an expanding circle of influence, however, all of them with startled stares aimed directly at that circle's center: Rose.

"Dave, why aren't I invisible?" Rose asked through calmly gritted teeth, as though it would prevent anyone else from hearing her. (It did not, and several people began to exchange hushed murmurs as a result.)

"Oh, you're invisible alright," Dave assured her with a suppressed chuckle, inspecting his fingernails. 

"If I'm invisible, then why is everyone staring straight at me?" Dave simply grinned smugly.

Concerned whispers and shared sentiments of confusion spread in waves throughout the scattered passersby, and in the absence of any help from Dave, Rose could only guess it was due to the perceived impossibility of teleportation she had been trying to avoid, a thought which provoked mild levels of anxiety deep within her -- that is, until she distinctly heard someone ask about a 'disembodied voice' originating from the 'floating clothes,' and a realization struck her. "Oh, hell."

At that moment, Rose's left hand greeted her forehead very suddenly with a flat embrace, and the marvelously-audible smack it produced caused several people to draw back.

"Dave," Rose all but growled as her hand slid away, doing her damnedest to remain calm and collected but currently on the decline, "would you kindly take us away from here?"

Dave shrugged, now rubbing a file against his nails as he continued floating nearby. "Where do you wanna go?"

"Anywhere but here would be nice." A familiar man with a familiar cellphone took a picture of her, and Rose cringed despite the fact that no distinguishing part of her body would be visible. " _Now,_ please."

"You gotta wish for it, sweetie."

Rose stamped her foot down in frustration. "I wish to be anywhere but here!"

Dave snapped his fingers, and in an instant, they were gone.


	3. Anywhere But Here

Teleportation, and in fact the general translocation of matter, is always a touchy subject among those who do not fully understand it.

This is especially true in science fiction, _especially_ those philosophical sorts of science fiction, where people complain about their atoms being scrambled, or complain about being afraid of their atoms being scrambled, or some equally ridiculous mortally-crippling dilemma.

The plain and simple truth is that teleportation is only as easy and safe as you make it -- and with magic, it is relatively easy and generally safe. When you get right down to it, it requires only two variables: the size of the object intended to be moved, and the physical location of its intended destination.

The whole process is much like moving a box in numerous ways, especially in that you figure out what it is you want to move, and then you move it. The largest difference, of course, is that the move is instantaneous, and does not actually require moving anything so much as it requires something simultaneously disappearing in one place and reappearing in another.

In fact, most often the easiest way to transport something via teleportation is to transport a defined box of space, usually a box which includes the basic physical dimensions of a desired object. While this often has the effect of taking a local portion of the nearby airspace along with whatever is being teleported, this is rarely an excessively harmful consequence, especially when most teleportations involve not just transferring one something, but exchanging two somethings; while one box is moved to one location, whatever was previously in the new location is transferred to the old one. This typically results in the harmless replacement of a teleported object by air, and maybe some dust.

Of course, the above method is not very convenient if you are, say, trapped in a block of concrete, and are attempting to teleport yourself out of it; you will simply bring a chunk of the concrete with you, still stuck around whatever parts of you it was originally stuck around. Thus, more complex methods had to be established, ones which allowed for the precise manipulation of only what one wanted to transfer, and nothing more; however, as it gets into a great deal of mathemagical formulas which are tedious in their application more than anything, this shall not be covered in further detail.

All that is necessary for any third-party observers to know is that Dave did not use the box method.

\---

In an instant, Rose found the reality around her blinked away into an entirely different one, and it only occurred to her immediately after the spatial leap that she never specified against, say, being brought to an arbitrary point in the vacuum of space -- an especially worrying thought when considering the fact that such an environment is rarely conducive to organisms which require oxygen to breathe, let alone wish themselves away.

These thoughts were quickly overwhelmed by the faint smell of chlorine, and the much more noticeable sensation of warm water coming up to greet Rose as she fell.

Rose did not recall being in the air previously, but she was now (if only for a moment). She also did not recall moving from a standing position to a sitting one, but she was in one now, and in fact appeared to be sitting outdoors, in a bubbling hot tub. She especially did not remember having her arm out, or holding a tropical drink in the hand attached to that arm, but she did have it out, and she was holding a drink -- only the surprise of suddenly falling and having a drink in her hand caused her to spill a third of its contents before she reflexively applied a firm grip to it.

From somewhere nearby, Dave sighed irritably, and that somewhere turned out to be directly across from Rose. He had also just fallen into the hot tub, and with their combined falls, short though they were, a noticeable amount of water was splashed over the side and onto the rough concrete that made up the nearby ground, where some of it flowed into an open swimming pool.

"You had one job," Dave muttered sourly, briefly lowering his sunglasses to glare a crimson-eyed glare. "I give you a free drink and what do you do with it? You dump it in the goddamn water; unbelievable."

Upon closer inspection, he appeared to now be entirely shirtless, and wearing a pair of swim trunks which were only visible as rainbow-inspired blurs of yellowish-orangey-red and bluish-purpley-pink beneath the turbulent water. In his hand was another, entirely different tropical drink, complete with miniature plastic umbrella and obnoxiously fruity odor.

"I know I didn't ask you what your preferences were for alcohol," he continued, "but you don't hafta pour half of it away so casually. I mean, Christ, I woulda drank it if you really don't want it."

"Where are we?" Rose asked lightly, and attempted to perform a manual reboot on her senses while the sudden influx of unexpected stimuli settled down. Concerns of clothing she would have to dry, potentially-oxygenless breaths she might need to take, and larger, safer amounts of finite wishes she would need to wish for all blended with one another in a slurry of incomplete thoughts. 

Dave shrugged. "Some hotel. Name escapes me, but I specifically remembered that it had a bitchin' hot tub."

It occurred to Rose that she was dealing with a maniac, and that she might have done well to settle for a more reasonable genie, rather than take the first one she found. They surely could not get much worse than this, and her odds for finding a better one would only increase with an extended search.

"Also, what was that little freakout all about?" Dave inquired, before taking a sip of his drink. "One second you're this calm and collected 'serious business' independent woman who don't need no genie, and the next you start chattering your teeth like a fourth grader about to piss herself at the annual talent show. You got some social anxiety lurking in that little noggin of yours?" To complement this question, Dave's eyebrows jumped up and down from behind his sunglasses, as if trying to wave hello to Rose's eyebrows while bouncing on an obscured trampoline.

Rose swallowed, to ensure that she still had a throat, and blinked a few times to confirm the continued existence of her eyelids. "I do not enjoy being the center of attention when I have not previously prepared for it," she replied as succinctly as she was able, which was not quite as succinctly as she would have liked, but it was steadily coming back to her along with the rest of her engaged consciousness.

The idea to look upwards came to Rose, and in hesitantly following it she noticed the distinctly orange hue to the sky's edge; a regular sunset was dimly illuminating her visible scope of the world. It brought to mind feelings of temporal uncertainty that, when combined with the spatial uncertainty she had been experiencing previously, made her feel as though she had been drugged, and only just woke up from her blackout.

Ultimately however, the signs were against this, as she did not feel lethargic or sluggishly intoxicated, and it was easy enough to reason that they were simply in a hotel somewhere across the country where the sun was visible at a different position. Yes, those thoughts appealed to her nicely, she felt, much more so than the previous ones.

A familiar sip brought her out of these thoughts somewhat abruptly. "Well," came the familiar voice that usually accompanied the familiar sip, "then it's a good thing I brought you someplace you can relax, huh?"

Rose frowned impulsively, but said nothing, and considered the remains of her drink while the comfortable warmth of the hot tub sank in. It was rather nice, all things reluctantly considered, and she supposed that a few minutes of soaking could do no lasting harm, dripping clothing aside. Cautiously, for the hell of it, Rose took a small sip of her drink, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually tasted like a tropical drink -- a rather delicious strawberry-and-mango-flavored tropical drink at that. The hint of alcohol was minor, but vividly present, and invited her to consume more.

"Like it?" Dave asked knowingly. Rose spared him a single, prim nod, and he returned it. "Thought so. It's a metric shitton easier to make a good drink with magic than it is with all the conventional shit most drink-makers would use; 's just ratios of ingredients, and once you get a solid combo at the atomic level you just multiply it enough to fill up a glass."

"So you don't know where we are?" Rose queried, inadvertently performing that extraordinarily human habit of staying, mentally, in the past. (Staying physically in the past, meanwhile, tends to be an extraordinarily inhuman habit, especially among magical beings who are occupied with an intense period of grief.)

"I don't know which hotel we're at," Dave corrected. "Pretty sure we're someplace in Europe." A reserved, albeit unsurprised sigh escaped Rose in regards to this, because she had very much been hoping to finish -- and in fact properly start -- her magical endeavors in America.

Unexpectedly, a beach ball flew over Rose's head, despite the fact that the nearest beach was more than ten miles away, and it caused her to instinctively duck.

As she ducked, an action which notably required her to angle her head downwards, two pieces of information became apparent to her.

The first was that if there was a beach ball flying overhead, regardless of the presence or lack thereof of any beaches, someone must have hit it; the shouts of protest about its fence-defying trajectory, dimly audible over the hot tub's bubbling, seemed to confirm this. Even if they were not aware of her presence, people were nearby.

The second, which worried her slightly more when taken in along with the first, was that her clothes were missing.

"Dave," Rose said slowly, dangerously.

"That's me; what'cha need?" Dave responded airily in turn, as though a cheery toddler had just called his name.

"Are my clothes invisible?"

Dave smiled and pointed a finger at Rose. "I'm glad you're asking the real questions," he said honestly, "because they aren't. But don't worry, you're not naked either; you still got your headband." Sip.

"And suppose I, for whatever reason, do not harbor the personal belief that a lone headband is sufficient to obscure my nudity: where are my clothes?"

The hand not holding his drink lightly cupped itself around Dave's chin, and he seemed to think intently for a moment. "The name of the street we were on was 'Hemingway,' wasn't it?"

The urge for Rose to reintroduce her forehead to her hand, plus its twin, increased so vehemently that she was able to ignore it entirely, and instead released an aggravated sigh. As a consolation, she placed both hands over her eyes, and held them there.

"Why?" she asked simply, defensively curling her knees up to her chest under the bubbling water.

"All you wished for was to be somewhere else, Rose; never said anything about bringing your clothes with you."

"It was _implied_."

Dave grinned a rather smug grin, the sort that would inspire even the most pacifistic of observers to try slapping it off. "Implications don't mean jack dick in the world of granting wishes, Rose."

Briefly, Rose removed her hands from her face, produced a sharp glare, and silently attempted to disembowel Dave with it. When this failed, her hands returned, and she sighed a more defeated sigh. "I don't suppose I'd be able to wish for a more sensible genie, would I?"

"Nope." Sip.

"Of course not." Rose slumped slightly in the hot tub, causing her shoulders to dip below the water line.

"I mean you COULD." The fingers obscuring Rose's eyes partially separated, allowing her pupils to sparkle with interest. "Like you could say, 'I wish for a more sensible genie,' I just wouldn't be able to grant it." Rose's fingers snapped shut again, as did her eyes behind them. "It's one of the rules," Dave continued, undeterred in his monologue, "put in place mostly to prevent genies from being pulled away from whatever they were doing against their will -- 'specially if they already had a client."

"I don't care," Rose said, quiet and reasonably dejected.

"It's also to stop people from playing favorites if they ever heard of a particular genie's reputation, let's say; it'd prevent a lot of other genies from getting to learn or have fun if people did that."

"I'm sorry," Rose said, a little louder, "maybe you didn't hear me, given that your head is currently shoved so impressively far up your own ass, so I will repeat it for you: _I don't care._ "

Dave had heard Rose perfectly the first time, and frowned slightly when she suggested that he might have been in any way hard of hearing. "...But above all else," he emphasized, "it makes humans like you motherfuckin' _squirm_ as you realize that taking up a genie's free time ain't all it's cracked up to be." Sip.

Rose said nothing now, but by the way she looked up at him as her hands slowly slid from her face, it became apparent she had just realized Dave was trying to teach her something of a twisted moral lesson. Bafflingly enough, this caused her to smile. It was a small smile, short and difficult to spot unless you already knew it was there, but a smile nonetheless -- and it appeared to be very genuine.

"You're testing me, aren't you?" she asked with a slightly brighter tone -- or, at the very least, a slightly less depressed one. 

A puzzled look quickly washed over Dave's face, preventing him from taking another sip of his drink in a timely fashion. "'Scuse me?"

"It's what you said about wanting a challenge," Rose continued, beginning to sit back up. A strange note of passion wormed its way into her voice, and her lips curled ever so slightly further upward. "In your mind, this wouldn't be much fun at all for either of us if it wasn't in some way challenging -- as, for instance, a good game of chess might be. As far as I can tell, the given challenge for you is to drive me away as soon as possible, while the challenge for me is to put up with it until I've gotten all that I want from you. A competition to see who gets their way first, in essence."

Dave looked on blankly, blinking several times (which, again, was not in the least bit apparent while darkened pieces of plastic obscured his eyes), until he began to laugh hysterically. It had begun as a soft chuckle, but then grew, as passionate laughs do, and ultimately became so intense that he accidentally spilled some of his own drink, which immediately sobered him up faster than a human eye could comprehend.

"That is fucking incredible," he said once the brief time-loop of mourning for his drink had passed. "It really is; I tell you about how seriously I take my job and as a result you suddenly develop this, _burning passion_ for overcoming obstacles in your life? Sweet baby fuckin' Jesus, that's hilarious even for a human."

The smile on Rose's face had by now shrunk back down to a neutral position, but a devious ghost of the curved line across her lips remained. "That's fine," she conceded. "You may ridicule me for believing that, in the end, I'll have gotten exactly what I want out of you -- and I will admit that you may even be _right_ in believing that you will beat me down before I can attain everything on my literal wishlist -- but that's hardly a reason not to try. I don't know what your track record is for humans that wound up satisfied after having their wishes granted, but I don't imagine any number, no matter how large or small, would be a perfect indicator of my chances at failure or success."

Dave remained deeply silent for several moments after this, enough so that, in the absence of his banter, Rose began to question whether he had originally been paying attention.

"Three," he muttered, after about ten seconds of continuous silence.

"...Three?"

"Three peeps were happy after I granted their wishes. They're not too hard to remember."

"I see. And exactly how many people have been unhappy?"

Dave smiled lazily, and shook his head. "Way too fuckin' many to be encouraging, I can tell you that much." Sip.

"Hm. Well, I _do_ still intend to get my money's worth of wishes out of you, so to speak -- which reminds me. I am still invisible, correct?"

"To everyone's eyes but yours and mine." He nodded towards the pool. "'S why no one's been pestering you about skinny-dipping."

Rose considered this. "And why haven't they heard us talking?"

"Sound bubble."

For some reason, even though Dave had just offered the most concise explanation possible, Rose raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not gonna get into technicals," he reluctantly added, "but it's pretty much the same effect as invisibility, only with hearing instead of sight."

"And what about the displacement of water we're producing in this hot tub?"

Dave groaned. "Why can't you just accept that I'm good at my job? I've been at this for a long fuckin' time; I know how to make sure some stupid humans can't see or hear us splashin' around in a hot tub."

"Fine, fine, fair enough," Rose concluded, even though she was still mildly curious. "Now, since my previous outfit is sitting on a filthy city sidewalk some hundreds upon hundreds of miles away, could you magic me up a replacement?"

Dave aimed a blank stare, sunglasses notwithstanding, towards Rose. "Well, first off, you hafta say the magic word--"

"Please?" Rose interrupted with mock-sweetness. 

The blank stare persisted. "Yes Rose, that is incredibly goddamned clever; you are absolutely the first person to ever think of that in the history of everyone who ever interacted with genies, _ever_. Thank you ever so fuckin' much for sharing that hefty nugget of highly-original comedic brilliance with my mad uncultured self."

"Actually, while we're on the subject, I don't suppose I can wish for the ability to pose wishes without explicitly 'wishing' for them, can I? It would be much more convenient to say, 'I want X,' and then have it appear before my eyes, no 'I wish's involved."

If the blank stare had any reason to stop existing, it was not at all apparent. "Alright -- that's about the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard anyone say ever, and once upon a time you wished for infinite wishes. But no, _you can't,_ because part of the fun is making you use that special little word every single time you want something. It's SUPPOSED to be aggravating."

Rose rolled her eyes, but kept a small smile regardless, as though she somehow enjoyed learning about these unbreakable semantics. "Of course it is."

"And if you'll stop interrupting me," Dave added, as his stare finally began to slip away, "you can't just wish for a new outfit; that's like going into a tailor's shop and saying 'dress me.' You gotta give me a description if you don't want some random shit thrown together. And I mean, yeah, I'm supposed to jump at the opportunity to make you regret wishes you didn't think out beforehand, but magicking up clothes is way too tedious for how little comedic value it represents."

A particularly rude belch cut Rose off before she could contemplate any specifications for new attire, after which Dave continued speaking, preemptively interrupting her even more. "Why do you want new clothes anyway? Nobody can see you as long as you're in the nude, and I assumed you'd wanna stay undetectable."

"Nobody in college could ever convince me to go streaking, and I don't intend to let a genie succeed where my peers failed."

"Ohhh, I get it; you're one of those prudish types."

"Is it really so prudish to want to be sensibly dressed while in public?"

"Yes," said Dave without a second thought, "yes it is."

Despite extensive staring, Rose failed to change Dave's opinion on the matter, and eventually she expelled her focus on it with a heavy sigh. Then, for good measure, she took a large gulp of her drink. While she very much doubted Dave had her best interests in mind, this hot tub was doing a fair job of reducing the stress he kept attempting to shovel onto her, and the drink still tasted alright. (At this point, the alcoholic content appealed to her more than the taste, but right now neither aspect was an unattractive one to her.)

"Alright," Rose declared once her cup was empty, and she felt ready to take another shot at escaping semantics, "I would like to make another wish."

"Hey, wishing protip: much like taking a dump, you don't gotta announce it before you do it."

"...I wish for twenty five more wishes."

Dave groaned, sighed, rolled his eyes, and threw his head back in a spectacle of aggravated multitasking, which he concluded by downing the remainder of his own drink in under three seconds. The curved glass previously containing it was thrown off to no place in particular -- which is to say, even though Rose followed it sailing through the air with her eyes, it seemed to actively fade into obscurity until she could no longer place where it had landed -- and Dave snapped his fingers. A watery image of the number 29 slowly floated up in the bubbling liquid between them, until it was on the water's surface. "You fucking suck at wishing for reasonable numbers of wishes, by the way."

"Good. I'll take what I can get when it comes to deliberately returning annoyances to you."

Dave accepted that with a shrug, and sipped the new drink that had just materialized in his hand. It was a deep blue, as opposed to the soft magenta of the previous drink.

"In addition," Rose continued, pausing very briefly to collect her thoughts and set them in order, "I wish for all clothing that I wear to become invisible to everyone but myself, an effect to occur only while I wear the clothing in question and at no other time, with 'clothing' including footwear, underwear, jewelery, any form of headgear, and everything that one traditionally wears to in any way obscure their otherwise naked body."

Dave stared on for several moments, before slowly snapping his fingers, whereupon a 28 bubbled up and replaced the 29. "Really thought about that one a lot, huh?"

"I had to if I was to prevent you from twisting it into something unhelpful for me, did I not?"

"No, I got that -- but you REALLY put effort into suddenly transmorphing into a goddamned lawyer. Like, you don't have to define clothing to me; I'm full of pranks and chicanery, and being cautious is all you've got I'm sure, but I'm not so desperate for getting my mischief on that, if you don't wish against it, I'm gonna go rootin' in ancient and dead languages to find a definition for 'clothing' that, I dunno, only makes mugs of hot cocoa invisible for you. Frankly, I'm insulted by your implications."

Rose shrugged, and smiled unusually sweetly. "While I do have an effectively infinite number of wishes at my disposal, I don't intend to blunder through every single mistake every human in your past has made, if I can help it."

Dave shrugged noncommittally. "Eh. I'll still be looking forward to your pitifully-human efforts and their inevitable shortcomings." Sip.

A serene period of tranquil silence passed as neither occupant of the hot tub had anything else to say, although where Dave continued to consume his drink at a leisurely pace, Rose occupied herself with a deeply thoughtful look, and in fact a deeply thoughtful state of mind. Her largest problem right now was that she had never been especially talented at designing dresses, and was unsure how to provide the necessary specifications for something worth wearing.

Wishing for her previous outfit crossed her mind, but she felt hesitant to retrieve it when any number of undesirable events could have already happened to it, scattered and unattended on a filthy sidewalk in a big city. It was a shame, because she had rather liked that dress, but the ability to request (and potentially receive) any outfit she desired negated the value of sentiment.

"...How about if I wish for a violet and gold dress of classy design?"

"Then you'll get the classy violet and gold dress I see fit to make." Dave spit out a sewing needle as though it was a watermelon seed, and caught it in the back of his thumb. "That all you want?"

"No, because I do still happen to want shoes and underwear, too."

"Course you do." Dave carefully plucked the needle from his hand, and flicked it off into a nearby bush. "Still gotta wish for it either way."

Throwing caution into the wind, and mostly banking on the fact that Dave actually might not want to waste his own time with producing multiple dresses, Rose said the following: "I wish for a violet and gold dress of classy design -- and I wish for it to be neatly set down someplace _dry_ around here."

Dave's mouth opened and closed itself several times in crude mimicry of Rose's hasty addendum, before he snapped his fingers again. The number between them changed, albeit dropping down by two.

Dutifully observant of the 26, Rose spoke up. "You aren't allowed to deduct wishes whenever you feel like it, are you?"

"What if I am?" Dave challenged. Rose produced a flat look with an arched eyebrow, and a period of about thirty speechless seconds passed. Neither of them wavered in their steady gazes, but eventually, Dave finally relented in his silence. "You said 'I wish' two times," he explained, "so two wishes were deducted. I'm not gonna have to explain basic fuckin' arithmetic to you, am I?"

A begrudging sigh escaped Rose, which was more because Dave had decided to subtract an extra wish at all, rather than due to any sort of negative impact it posed. Her potential supply of wishes was no smaller, and reluctantly, she let her qualms go. "So where is my dress?"

Dave pointed to a spot on the ground behind Rose. She carefully spun around and, sure enough, neatly folded on the concrete a short distance away was a sleek purple dress. Ornate gold streaks ran through it in sweeping patterns of waves and swirls, the two colors woven together in a masterful combination which superseded its aesthetic simplicity.

"Impressive," Rose acknowledged without turning back to Dave.

"Wouldn't be a genie if I couldn't act like a jack of all trades." Sip. "But go on, before someone else takes it."

Rose, despite herself, failed to get out of the hot tub.

"Nervous?" Dave prodded.

"Underwearless," Rose corrected.

"You're fucking invisible!" he reminded her. "What does it matter?"

"I also plan on revoking that invisibility at some point, and to be perfectly clear, I don't intend to do that whilst--"

Dave sighed a rather loud sigh, and snapped his fingers at an even greater volume, cutting Rose off entirely. A plain pair of black underwear popped into existence atop the dress. The number in the water remained the same, a fact which Rose noted upon turning back around.

"No bra?" she asked plaintively. Dave gave her a flat look, which adeptly conveyed the notion that he did not plan on giving out freebies left and right. "I wish for a bra," Rose thoughtfully added, pointing to the small pile of clothing, "one that fits me." Dave snapped his fingers. The requested garment popped into existence, atop the underwear. This time, a new number did bubble up again, now a 25. "Also, I wish for a nice pair of comfortable shoes, preferably ones that aren't offensive to the eyes." Snap. Pop. Bubble. "Mm, I'm not a terribly big fan of white shoes, but alright."

"You done yet?" Dave asked, and felt assured that this was the case as Rose finally exited the hot tub.

No one seemed to notice the water that dripped off of her, a fact which she was unspeakably grateful for. "I wish for a towel," she said. A splash sounded, and behind her she found that Dave had just smacked his head forward into the water. His hand snapped its fingers above his head, and a white fluffy towel appeared at Rose's feet. She took it, quickly draping it around herself, and was silently ecstatic to find that no one commented on any floating towels.

As she dried herself, Rose noticed the distinct stopping of the hot tub's bubbling noises, an event which coincided with the calming of its waters. Next to it stood Dave, already dry and fully dressed, albeit in what now appeared to be a slim black suit, dress pants and formal shoes included. "Christ, you're slow," he told her, and took a sip of what now appeared to be a drink so yellow that it glowed.

"Yes, well, us mortals are not exactly known for being instantaneous in our actions, and I don't quite feel comfortable with the thought of willingly putting my body back into your hands just for the sake of being dried."

"No idea why; me and mine know how to be gentle."

"Perhaps you'll get a chance to prove that one day."

Dave raised an eyebrow at this -- which indirectly brought attention to the fact that his sunglasses now featured a metallic frame, as opposed to their original plastic -- but said nothing, and allowed Rose to clothe herself in peace.

Rose, having never allowed her head to dip into water, dried herself easily within a minute, and carefully dressed afterwards. It was something of a slow process, as she gauged the visibility of her garments, and whether anyone still lounging in the pool would notice them disappearing as she picked them up; eventually, however, Rose was dressed and, in her opinion, looked rather stylish too.

By the time she finished, the sun had already disappeared behind the horizon, a blanket of darkness slowly being thrust over top of them. The stars had yet to arrive, but a steadily rising moon assured the earth they were on their way.

"So, what's the occasion?" Rose asked, shifting her feet in the, admittedly, entirely comfortable shoes. Apparently, when he was not screwing around, Dave really knew how to deliver.

"Why's there gotta be an occasion? Can't I just like wearing fancy suits?"

Rose shrugged. "I suppose, but typically people only wear fancy attire when they plan on attending a fancy event."

"Okay sure," Dave conceded with a shrug, "but I'm not people, I'm a person. And in case you hadn't noticed over the course of the past half hour, I'm a genie person to boot." To emphasize this, Dave pulled a candy cigarette from an arbitrary point in the air before him, and expertly flicked it into his mouth. "I don't have to have a reason for doing anything whatsoever other than just wanting to." As he said this, the end of his cigarette spontaneously combusted, and a small rainbow-colored flame steadily burned there.

Rose considered his statement, plus the convincing display, and briefly wondered whether she could wish to become a genie for sheer sake of convenience.

"You can't," Dave said helpfully. "Wishers of any flavor ain't allowed to change their species of origin." Despite the informative nature of his words, Rose frowned.

"You can read my thoughts, too?" Dave nodded. "Is nothing sacred to a genie?"

"Well," Dave said softly, rubbing his chin as he visibly looked over Rose, "given that you're still visible to me, but you never wished for your clothes to be visible to me, too... doesn't look like it." Despite Dave's charmingly pleasant smile, Rose's frown did not improve, and in fact worsened. "What? Is being a relentless prude that important to you?"

"Yes. Yes, it is." And Rose made a wish to prove it.

Dave obliged, taking the liberty of reminding Rose that she would have no way of proving whether the wish was granted, anyway, but still snapping his fingers. Like a groggy balloon, a 22 floated out of the hot tub, and lazily hovered above it.

"Now," Rose said, currently satisfied with her relative levels of visibility and invisibility, "I think I'd like to go out for a night on the town."

"That so?" Dave asked, neither enthused nor sarcastic. "Is that a part of the 'heavy lifting' you planned on having me do earlier?"

"No, actually. I was thinking: so long as you've already brought me here, a little fun in a city I don't particularly care about or have any affiliations with would be a good opportunity to hone my wishing skills, and... 'accustom' myself to the regular level of chaos you might bring with you. A crash course on putting up with all of your magical horseshit, if you will. You can't deny that I clearly need it."

"You're right, I can't."

"Then we are in agreement. Come along, Dave," Rose said, and began walking around the pool toward the hotel, careful to avoid the splash zone of any small children. "This is going to be a learning experience for the both of us, and barring extreme catastrophe, I plan on putting as many of your 'genie rules' to the test as I am humanly able."

Dave shrugged, chewed a little on the end of his burning cigarette, and gently took to the air after Rose, because even he could not deny that learning how many stupid wishes a girl could make in one night sounded fun.


	4. A Night on the Town

Multiple magical conferences have been held to discuss the topic of magic performed around nonmagical beings, and only three constants are present when it comes to these conferences.

The first is that the only nonmagical beings truly discussed at these conferences are humans, due to the unique trait they possess in that humans are the only wholly-sentient nonmagical beings as of yet discovered by any magical beings. Animals of all kinds are generally not considered wholly sentient, only partially so, and the psychological detriments a rabbit might experience after being pulled out of any form of hat, therefore, are often not seriously considered, and are at best lightly joked about around magical water coolers.

In this same vein, there has been for some time now an awkwardly serious movement going on in the magical world about what rights humans have, and what rights they should have, when it comes to magic. This is a movement which has coincided with the recent, if still incredibly minor increase in the presence of humans displaying magical capabilities, a stupefyingly uncommon-but-nonetheless-extant phenomenon which is still being investigated, and which has led to the reluctant repeal of the strict ' **NO HUMANS ALLOWED** ' policy these conferences previously maintained.

As there are very few humans alive capable of performing real feats of magic, and not just the illusory tricks available at Vegas shows, the humans who are allowed to attend these conferences have, individually, a great amount of sway in representing their species. However, because there are so many more magical species who remain bitter about these nonmagical beings suddenly becoming magical, instead of contently remaining utterly plain and nonmagical, not much has been accomplished in granting them equal rights.

This brings us to the second constant, which is that every time humans are mentioned at a conference, at least one person will vehemently boo. Usually, multiple people will boo, and it is not unheard of for upwards of half of a conference's attendees to simultaneously participate in this raucous act if a particularly radical change is suggested in regards to humans.

Not everyone boos for the same reasons, but there is always someone whose feathers are at least metaphorically ruffled any time humans are mentioned. Again, while few magical beings truly despise the silly magic-lacking entities they share a planet with -- even after their jump to silly mostly-magic-lacking entities -- the true issue is that few beings of any level of magical prowess want humans to think of them as anything more than mythical, mainly because the sense of uncertainty gives them a lot of leeway in doing whatever the hell they want, and having that suddenly taken away would be pretty jarring for all involved.

It took a great deal of magical paperwork to establish any set of rules at all concerning the interactions of magical beings with nonmagical beings, but eventually it was the genies who were willing to consolidate their efforts the most for the task: they organized the necessary magical surveys and polls, mathemagically proved that screwing with humans is most hilarious when done in reasonable proportions, and concentrated all of their factual information, personal opinions, and nigh-limitless magical abilities together in order to produce the first, and last, official set of magical laws.

Due to the ways in which they have been established, these laws are self-monitoring, each able to automagically alert an on-duty magical peace officer whenever it is broken. While this means it is still physically possible to disobey these rules, few intentionally do, as it will always make a lot of authority figures very angry -- not because interacting with a human in an illegal way is especially frowned upon, but because the excessive amounts of magical legal paperwork its aftermath requires is.

Finally, there is the unique fact that not one single conference has ever achieved 100% attendance.

This is a feat which has been investigated multiple times, and as it turns out, there is exactly one magical being who has never once attended these conferences, despite having willingly agreed to be put on the roster. It is a matter that has not been heavily pursued, but has still prevented every single conference held from granting a '100% attendance' award to itself at any point in time. This has bothered a large number of attendees just as much as it has inspired them to continue attending, even if they really do not want to, just in case that fellow ever does show up and incidentally causes anyone not in attendance to become the new jackass(es) who ruined the 100% attendance award for everyone else.

None of this currently concerns anyone to a drastic extent, but then the future is always more concerning _in_ the future than in the present, the past, and the present-to-become-the-past; what is important to take away from all this is that humans are a hot button topic for most magical beings, and much like politics and religion are subjects worth hours of fruitless discussion among humans, so too are humans themselves and how they should be treated a debatable issue among virtually everyone magical.

\---

The night air was already brisk just thirty minutes past sunset, and it came to be that nobody wearing a reasonable amount of clothing really wanted to be walking around at this time. An American girl in a European country, wearing a short dress and too busy being only vaguely bothered by the cold to try negating it entirely, felt this rather strongly; at any rate, she felt it much more so than her utterly indifferent genie.

And as she explored the perspectively-strange city streets, Rose made several more wishes to pass the time, and to get in her practice. They were, chronologically, as follows:

  * to divine the location of the nearest night club (which was not originally a wish, but Dave had stubbornly refused to answer her question otherwise)
  * a new, more permanent sound bubble around herself, rather than around a hot tub she did not want to try dragging with her, with the only hearing-exception being Dave
  * the above wish, but modified so that Rose could still hear her own voice
  * after a brief period of thought, the increased functionality of both her (in)visibility and (in)audibility where both could be toggled at her discretion, in terms of both whether anyone at all could see or hear her, and what individual exceptions there were
  * following another brief period of thought, and a very enlightening test run with an equally-enlightened homeless man, the ability to toggle the visibility of her clothing in conjunction with her body
  * and the ability to hover no more than six feet off the relative ground, at will.



Throughout the course of making these wishes, in tandem with every wish she had made prior, Rose came to realize just how much wishing was a sort of art, like computer programming. This was a realization she had not made lightly, because Rose had taken a computer programming course in college, one which she quickly found was entirely too boring for her tastes. She had talent with it, because it required little more than logical thinking and the understanding of both syntax and where you had inevitably fucked it up, but in the end it was terribly drab, too much so for her to enroll in a followup class.

At any rate, it was not difficult for her to understand that, as a sort of balance for her virtually limitless capabilities in wishing for practically anything, her 'interpreter' was total dog shit. She had made specifically sure to inform Dave of this opinion, to which he had taken the liberty of reminding Rose that she could stop making wishes at any time. Rose reluctantly refused, which she only regretted slightly when Dave offered an impressively smug nod and grin in exchange.

These opinions were all made just before her most recent wish on the list above, a wish which was the cultivation of an unfinished product, because general principles of efficiency stated that it was better to start a prototype now than to wait until it was too late trying to design an impossible perfection.

This was not to say that Rose did not know how to wish for the ability to fly, so much as she did not want to jump right into flying when it was still such a dangerous sport, and she knew nothing about it.

Flying is, after all, a very inhuman ability, and in fact an incredibly dangerous ability for those who do not know how to fly. It would be much more reasonable, Rose thought, to learn how to float before learning how to fly. It thus stood to reason that practice hovering would significantly reduce her chances of matching the average unaided human's attempts at flight, in terms of both flight time and survival rate.

That is to say, hopefully, she would exceed those attempts in both relative terms.

Briefly, at Dave's suggestion, Rose had considered wings; she could not entirely refute Dave's claims of how "absolutely bitchin' they are, like you're in a goddamn anime and, that's right son: you're the motherfuckin' protagonist," an opinion which coincided with the spontaneous growth of two brilliantly white three-meter wings out of his back. They were quickly changed to a bloody red, as per Dave's preferences, but the aesthetic change failed to make his ensuing flight stunts any less impressive.

Alas, the odds were stacked against these appendages: they were only going to be totally cosmetic extra weight, cumbersome in small spaces, and would undoubtedly pose a much greater hassle when it came to clothing than Dave's display suggested. Rose did not wish for wings; not yet, at any rate.

"Sure you don't wanna reconsider?" Dave asked while silently gliding alongside Rose, bobbing up and down to dodge the few cars on the road.

"I am sure, Dave. You may not be aware, but in human society, 'no' has this peculiar connotation where it means 'no,' and in case it was not clear, that is the meaning I intended."

While Dave considered this, a burly van drove straight at him, and he failed to move out of the way in time. This elicited only the slightest hints of worry from Rose, due to the fact that a dead genie seemed generally less-capable of granting wishes than a live one, no matter how asinine; the van passed harmlessly through him, however, and Dave astutely failed to notice.

"Yeah, alright," Dave said some seconds afterward, before landing beside Rose with an elegant swoop. "I'll let you have that one. Right now I'd just like to settle down and see what your definition of a 'night out on the town' is."

"What do you mean by that?" Rose asked accusingly.

"Oh nothing really." Having already landed, Dave carefully removed his wings by popping both of them off, apparently painlessly, and tossing them into the wind. Both disintegrated into puffs of feathers, which in turn slowly crumbled apart until nothing remained. "But like, what, is THIS your natural nightlife habitat?" Dave pointed to the building coming up as they walked along the sidewalk, just under half a block away.

"This will be my first time attending, actually."

"Holy fucking shit on a stick -- no foolin'? _Seriously??_ " Dave asked energetically, appearing as shocked as possible with wide-rim sunglasses. "You mean to tell me that your alarmingly-charming social-butterfly's ass has NEVER been to a night club before? Fucking CHRIST Rose, _warn_ me before you carpet bomb my mad unsuspecting self with that kind of unanticipated announcement. Droppin' high-yield explosives of surprising personal information like that -- you could straight _kill_ a bitch if they knew literally everything about you minus that one fact. I mean, FUCK, if I couldn't fly I would have just fallen the fuck _down_ after bein' put in the blast-radius of that immense BOMBSHELL of shocking personal data." Dave said this despite currently walking along beside Rose, not flying in the slightest, but if he was aware of this he failed to show it.

"Lucky you," Rose replied easily, "but I am not mixing myself with the European nightlife for the benefit of your insight, Dave. While I do intend to have fun, and I happen to be dressed up like the typical twenty-something outgoing 'modern girl' who would likely find her fun through consuming copious amounts of alcohol and dancing with groping-inclined strangers, that is actually not at all the sort of fun I am looking for. No, I think just fucking with people while they can neither see nor hear me will be much more entertaining all around."

"In a _crowded_ night club, where people are constantly moving and bumping into the people that they CAN see?"

"That's what the hovering is for."

"The hovering you haven't even fuckin' tried yet?"

"No, the hovering that I secretly already had, and never told you about." Dave frowned at this, and in turn Rose smiled. "Just let me experiment my way," Rose continued, "and you can, I don't know, do whatever it is that a genie does when their master or mistress isn't making any wishes."

The glass of liquid that Dave had previously allowed to spontaneously disappear when he first took flight, so as not to spill any, spontaneously reappeared, containing another new color of drink. This one was a flat green, and it hardly smelled appetizing, but he immediately chugged half of it nonetheless. "Whatever," said Dave, "just try not to create too much of a mess for me to clean up, a'right? The fun of being a genie is granting regrettable wishes for different people every day, not staying with one goddamned person who refuses to let her wishes run out."

"Oh, that reminds me: I wish for... thirty four more wishes."

Although the urge was there, Dave did not bother introducing his hand to his forehead; the two were already well acquainted mentally, and currently saw no purpose in a physical relationship. He snapped his fingers, and a downtrodden 49 bubbled up from the cracks in the concrete underfoot. "Anything else I can get you, your highness? Maybe a tall refreshing glass of vintage 'fuck off'?"

"Oh, no thank you; while it sounds absolutely refined, I'd hate to spoil my appetite before I have a chance to check the bar's stock. But feel free to pour some for yourself, any time you like."

Abruptly, Rose stopped walking, their destination finally reached. A glowing purple sign above them read "Expressions Obsidienne," and illuminated a small front door on the short building it hung from. "Looks a tad simple," Rose commented, "but perhaps that will prove for the better. With any luck, it won't be too crowded inside."

Carefully, Rose pushed the door open. A small, dimly lit black-and-purple hallway greeted her, before veering immediately off to the left, and then swerving right further in. Rose took a step inside, and came to the profound realization that she now had both a floor and a ceiling to work with, meaning this hallway was as good a place as any to begin practicing her floating.

Rose already knew from pestering Dave while walking here that flight required a certain level of concentration, and that it would become easier over time, as with most skills. What Rose did not know was just how much concentration was the appropriate amount, and as a result nearly crashed against the ceiling during her initial attempt to gently hover. This caused an over-correction back down, followed by an over-correction back up to avoid the floor, and mostly just involved an invisible, inaudible girl vertically pinging back and forth until she managed to steady herself out somewhere in the middle.

An imperceptibly light layer of sweat began to coalesce on her skin, and Rose frowned; her hopes had been that magical flight would not require strength, stamina, or anything else that would necessitate a brisk shower if she did it for too long in too short a period of time. Alas, much to her greater passive fears, magical flight counted as exercise.

"Havin' fun up there?" Dave asked once inside, finding Rose to be steadying herself upside-down and angled diagonally towards a wall.

"I am a veritable fountain of joy," Rose intoned.

"Oh good; I don't need to offer any help then." Dave walked past Rose before she could drop her pride for long enough to protest, and quickly disappeared around the corner. Rose huffed, but quickly acknowledged the act's futility, as this was precisely the sort of horseshit Dave would no doubt continue to throw at her for as long as she kept him in her service -- longer, should he happen to be the vengeful sort -- and that meant she had to become as accustomed to his selective uselessness as humanly possible, as fast as humanly possible.

As Rose idly floated there, musing about the inevitable future of her dealings with Dave, she realized music was faintly grumbling down the hall: a good sign that this building was, in fact, a night club. And so, with a focus on simply keeping herself aloft rather than on learning how to violently smash herself against hard surfaces in a confined space, Rose carefully dragged herself along the walls, until she was greeted with the open area of what she hoped was a dance floor, and not some modern pagan sacrificial pit.

Silhouettes of men and women were loosely gathered on a mostly-polished metal floor which, ultimately, could not hide its shameful scuff marks even in the dark. Numerous light beams of varying hues shone down from the high ceiling, but none of the individual colors seemed to enjoy the attention, and were constantly switching between one another in ten second intervals. A bar off in the northeast corner did not seem to know which wall it wanted to be against more, and so had positioned itself at a 45 degree angle to both; behind it sat a curved walling of assorted drinks, which was perhaps bathed in the most light here, and which featured a distinctly varied collection of exotic alcohols. Between the counter and drinks was a man who looked entirely too suitable for bartending at age thirty, busy cleaning up what was either dimly-lit vomit, or an incredibly realistic countertop painting of dimly-lit vomit.

The music, which Rose could now discern was emanating primarily from a boxy cluster of sound equipment by the west wall, had steadily risen in volume since she first noticed it. Rose could only assume it had been thirty decibels quieter before because the song had only just started then, and whatever unspoken rule dictating that music had to become louder and more complex as it went on was still in effect.

Near the equipment appeared to be a man of Swedish descent, which would explain his interest in the electronic jazz spilling out around him; he had wild blonde hair that preferred combating gravity to obeying it, and wore casually snazzy attire that half-suggested he was inspecting the equipment for a legitimate reason. He was either a sound technician, or a "sound technician."

It mattered not; Rose had a relatively full assortment of club patrons to antagonize at her leisure -- a whole room full of people whom she could prank in any manner she wished, spectacularly literally at that -- and she wholly intended to.

Carefully, Rose sprung off from the wall she had been anchored against, much like a swimmer submerged in a pool, and found the floor rushing frighteningly quickly up to her face -- but only briefly. It stopped, and Rose realized there had been a shadowy flight of stairs leading down here, as the room featured a significantly lowered floor. In tune with this development, Rose found her hovering height to be insubstantial compared to the average club-goer. She would be, at best, lightly brushing the heads of everyone in here, and that was no good at all for playing aerial pranks.

"Dave?" she called, looking around for her missing genie. It took her a moment to realize that he was the Swedish man, waving to her from across the room. She ignored the stubble his chin now featured, in fact ignoring every visual difference about him, and said, "I wish for my hovering capabilities to be increased from six feet to ten feet."

With absolutely no regard for how quiet Rose was, or how loud the music had become, Dave nodded, silently snapped his fingers, and allowed a 48 to peek out from behind the nearby speakers.

Rose never noticed the number; as she had been maintaining an upward force, to ensure she remained at the maximum possible hovering height, Rose found herself suddenly flung up exactly four feet into the air. It was as distracting as it was vaguely nauseating. Nonetheless, she had much more elbow room up here, with another six feet or so of space up to the ceiling. This would do.

Following this, an odd number of minutes were spent tossing and turning above the heads of many in what felt like sluggish antigravity, during which Rose resigned herself to practicing her limited flight. Eventually, her practice yielded a basic grasp on moving in the cardinal directions, plus up and down, but anything more complex was likely to result in unintentional rolling and dizziness. This included rotation of any kind, but Rose felt confident she could maneuver around with the handicap, and finally, she took a good, long, surveying look at all the people below her.

None of them really looked especially enthused about being here, but there was definitely a distinct connection between any given individual's levels of alcoholic intoxication and reckless enthusiasm.

Decidedly, Rose's first target would be the sober man with the thin leather vest, regaling a bored young woman with tales of... well, tales of something -- it had been a while since Rose had taken a class on the French language, let alone used the knowledge it granted -- but the tales sounded asinine, enough so to warrant action.

"I wonder if I should monologue," Rose mused, idly adjusting her float trajectory. "No one would hear me, after all; it could give me that woefully under-appreciated chance to connect with my inner self." Carefully, she leaned forward, then leaned back again, because hovering did not actually require any leaning; it just made the experience more immersive.

As an afterthought, she leaned slightly forward again, because she could.

"Go for it!" Dave called from across the room, and he must have been using magic to project his voice, because although Rose could barely hear the people that were directly under her over the music, she heard him just fine. "The worst that can happen is someone tells you you talk to yourself too much -- and obviously that's not gonna happen if no one can hear you. Besides, who fuckin' cares what other people think when you're the one learning from conversations with yourself and not them? Talk to yourself all you want!"

Rose considered this.

Her considerations led her to toggle her audibility to Dave, an action which required only thinking about it, and concentrating her will into the thought. This, according to Dave, was most easily achieved by snapping one's fingers, but could be done with feasibly any gesture. Rose managed by crossing her arms.

"Now then," she continued, confident in her silence to everyone around her. "How to respond to a man such as this one...?" Thin Leather Vest, as Rose would choose to nickname him, appeared to have lost the interest of his original audience, if he ever had it, as the woman below was staring intently at her phone with a dull expression. Thin Leather Vest did not seem to notice, and continued talking about... bears? Something about animals and forest environments, which seemed to cause the woman to occasionally flick her eyes upwards in fading interest. It was an uphill battle, and Thin Leather Vest was losing. 

In a moment of dazzling inspiration, Rose decided to float down, outstretch an arm, and flick Thin Leather Vest on the nose. It interrupted his spiel, and caused him to draw back, bewildered. He produced an unfamiliar expletive, given in a ridiculously incomprehensible accent, and Rose indulged herself in a small giggle. Then she tapped her chin, contemplating whether the deed was enough.

When Thin Leather Vest tried to continue his story, Rose knew it was indeed not enough, and found herself forced to flick his nose again. This time, Thin Leather Vest swatted his arms around, apparently convinced that an unseen insect was the perpetrator. Had Rose not been keen enough to float back up in time, her spectral ruse might have been ruined; more important, however, was the woman's reaction. Rose was unsure what, but she said something while waggling her eyebrows, which meant it had to be either crudely sultry or demeaning, if not both. "Good! You tell 'im," Rose muttered appreciatively. A confident smile had replaced the woman's earlier meek, uninterested expression, and...

Rose blinked, momentarily stunned, as the girl looked straight at her with that smile, for just long enough to wink.

She walked off and disappeared beyond an awfully-distracting arguing couple before Rose could respond appropriately, leaving both her and Thin Leather Vest to stare after her with vague cause for concern. The fleeting interest lasted neither of them, but while Thin Leather Vest dejectedly settled over at the bar, Rose could not help but feel the woman had done that for a reason. Seldom did someone arbitrarily wink upwards in a direction that perfectly coincided with the face of someone floating above them, totally invisible and inaudible, a fact which caused Rose to question just how visible she really was in this dark atmosphere.

After some deliberation, she wished for the ability to know whether she was visible (or audible, because why not throw on the extra enhancements?) to someone simply by looking at them.

Then she crossed her arms, thought a specific thought, and remade the wish so that Dave would actually hear her and put it through.

Unfortunately, the woman had wandered off entirely by this point, but after a quick scan of the indoor crowd, Rose concluded that no one else in this room, Dave aside, could see or hear her.

To match this, the question of who next to assault struck Rose, and she met the challenge with newfound uncertainty.

The still-arguing couple seemed interesting, but also dangerous; someone less volatile might do her better, she felt. Below, an inebriated man stumbled, and tried to lean on someone's shoulder, but this resulted in a fall as the shoulder was immediately withdrawn. Rose frowned; the intoxicated were always a fun bunch of people, and generally very suggestive, but a niggling reservation prohibited Rose from so easily taking advantage of him. Off in the middle of the floor, a young girl seemed to be having a seizure, but upon closer inspection, it was clear she had never learned how to dance, and was proving this in as wild and extravagant a manner as possible.

Nobody in here, Rose realized, stuck out to her as a prime target as much as she thought they would -- not past Thin Leather Vest, anyway, and Rose was beginning to wonder if he was an outlier. Nobody here was a perfect saint, herself included, and she was not about to start questioning whether people 'deserved' her punishments, but while she very much could just go on an indiscriminate rampage, flicking the noses of anyone and everyone in here, it seemed strangely... _wrong_.

"Dave?" Rose called, and worked her way over to him. He was, apparently, attempting to play disc jockey for the night club using equipment that was previously nonexistent. It was unclear to Rose whether he intended to play better music, or worse, but she feared that both options might sound the same to her.

"What up?" he asked, slightly distracted. In front of him, a computer on a small table was closely monitored by his sunglasses. A list of words, presumably song titles, were scrolling past on the screen; he stopped for none of them.

"How do you do it?"

Dave shrugged. "Do what? Details, Lalonde, they matter more than you think."

"How do you refuse to care so easily?"

"Centuries of practice. Also," Dave said, now looking up at Rose, "because I know you're trying to get the pranking angle down, it's a lot easier for a genie, because people literally ask you to intervene in their lives. It just takes that little extra spark of being a mischievous dickhead, and BAM: you've got yourself a career out of making people regret their words and subsequently laughing at those people."

"...I suppose that's as valid a reason as any." A subtle conflict brought itself to bear inside Rose, however, and it brought to her mind one question: When did I reverse my growth as a misanthropist?

"Well, I don't know your life's story," Dave said, disregarding the difference between Rose's thoughts and words, "but I figure it'd be a pretty convincing argument if you, I dunno, suddenly ran into someone who willfully toyed with you at every conceivable turn, and you had a negative reaction to it." Dave smiled pleasantly at Rose, who in turn frowned. After a moment, Dave shrugged, and returned his attention to the computer. "Look, it ain't my problem if you got reservations about performing furious spectacles of unholy japery on your own species. Fuck, I'm still waiting on that heavy lifting you promised, so I can be done with this deal and head out to somewhere secluded to avoid humans for a while."

"What has you convinced I won't keep you around afterwards, in case I think of anything else to wish for once the important wishes are out of the way?"

Dave looked at Rose with a sobered expression so flat it could have convinced people that his head was cubic. "Rose, I am so far from convinced that I'm not sure it's in the same multiverse as me. But," he added cheerily, going back to the computer, "I figure it can't hurt to say those words out loud and plant the idea in your head." A brief silence followed -- or rather, a brief period of no one daring to talk over the deafening music followed -- at the end of which Rose spoke up.

"Decidedly," she said, slowly and thoughtfully, "I have slightly fewer reservations about enslaving an asinine genie than I do about arbitrarily ruining human lives."

"Boo," Dave said unenthusiastically, and finally selected a song from the computer. The music that had been playing stopped as the switch occurred, and Dave began to walk hastily away from the equipment. "You're done in here, right?" he called back to Rose. "You didn't look like you were achieving much, and I think my idea'll play out much better."

"I was _not_ finished in here, actually," Rose said bitterly, and found it difficult to fly after Dave at a perfectly matching speed.  "I was just momentarily partially lost as to how I should best continue."

"Ah, close enough," Dave said with a wave of his hand, still walking.

Meanwhile, the disgruntled comments of everyone who had been masochistic enough to enjoy the last song, and become upset when it was cut short, were suddenly drowned out by blasts of sound that Rose felt would resemble a stupendously dense brick wall were it translated from sound to sight. If anyone complained, and undoubtedly several patrons tried, their cries went totally unheard.

A wave of disorientation bowled Rose over, and forced her to land, legs wobbly. Dave motioned for Rose to follow him out of the club, and she sluggishly obliged, with Dave taking her hand in his to lead them away.

"That was your idea of a prank?" she asked once they were outside, where the crisp night air seemed to refresh her senses. A dull hum penetrated the walls of the establishment, but for the most part the sound failed to escape its prison. "To just blare loud... hell, I wouldn't even call that music."

"Good, 'cause it wasn't music; it was just some magical white noise that's really handy for knocking people unconscious." Rose did not have an immediate response to this, and so Dave continued. "It's not for nefarious purposes," he assured her. "Not like, wickedly nefarious. I'm not exceeding Disney villain stereotypes here, I swear; I just thought I saw someone familiar in there, and I wanted to flush 'em out."

Flashes of incredulity, puzzlement, and distaste all crossed Rose's face, and attempted to culminate in a question of why Dave would consider mass-unconsciousness the most effective means of finding a single person in a populated building; before this culmination could finish, however, a young woman walked out of the same door they had, arms crossed.

Dave smiled. "Aha, see? If she was human, she'd be down for the count on the floor in there."

The woman standing before them had long, dark brown tangles flowing from the top of her head down to the small of her back, and a darkened complexion which suggested she was not from this country, let alone continent. Her eyes were deeply verdant, and seemed to bore into Dave with as much passionate hatred as they did childish amusement, which happened to be an especially difficult combined expression for eyes of any kind to display. Her clothing consisted of elegantly simple shades of earthen colors, with not a single area especially revealing, and its highlight was a light grey fur pelt around her neck, which seemed almost silvery in the moonlight.

The most surprising part about her was, to Rose, the fact that she had distinctly winked at her not five minutes earlier.

"Dave," the woman said in a tone of questionable, but definitely heated, intent. 

"Neps," Dave responded carelessly in turn. He nodded off to the side, toward Rose. "This is Rose."

"Can she see me?" Rose asked, trying to sound indifferent. She mostly sounded confused, because she was; looking at 'Neps' with her latest wished-for skill suggested that she could not see her, let alone hear her, but... 

"Not in the traditional sense," both Dave and the woman responded, which led to them sharing a sharp look immediately after. "Rose, this is Nepeta," Dave added, speaking alone this time.

"Wait a minute; is there just some magical trump card she has in terms of being able to see or hear me?"

"You know, that's actually not a bad way to describe it," Dave replied before Nepeta could, tapping his chin. "Just adjust that idea to fit pretty much _everyone_ in the magical community, and voila; you're vaguely more magically-cultured."

"Dave, you can tell your human how magic works later," Nepeta said, bitterness tinting her voice, "but right now I wanna know why you had to ruin my fun so carelessly! I walked into the bathroom fur two minutes, and when I walked out everyone was on the ground!"

"Hey, to a genie no one's fun is more important than his own."

Nepeta nodded to Rose. "Your caretaker here at least had the sense to play her games in a less trans-purr-ent manner; I think she even made it funnier fur the both of us."

" _Whoa_ whoa whoa," Dave exclaimed, waving his hands in protest.  "Rose is not my caretaker; being a genie isn't some magical fuckin' babysitting service -- and if it _was_ it'd be the genies taking care of the humans, not the other way around. And, what, is floating around and punching people in the nose less conspicuous than amnesia now?"

"I never punched anyone's noses," Rose chimed in. "Just flicked them."

"You stay out of this," Dave retorted, jerking a finger toward Rose without looking away from Nepeta. "Besides, what could honestly ever be construed as more fun than a room full of sleeping humans?" He nudged Nepeta with an elbow. "Come on. METRIC fucktons of ripe opportunity there."

"Dave," Nepeta said with a short sigh, "not all of us can fly, teleport, or whisker-selves away to a mew location as easily as genies can; some of us have to squeeze as much fun as magically paw-ssible out of the humans in a given area, and if that fun is to remain _legal,_ it usually requires keeping them conscious!"

"Now hold on just a diddly-fucked moment," Dave argued, banging his fist on a mimed surface with a resounding _thump_ , "you among others CAN fly; I've seen you do it."

"At the _speed of a bird,_ whene-fur I _am_ one. That's nowhere near as fast as your ca-paw-bilities!"

Dave rolled his sunglasses-obscured eyes. "Details, details."

Impudently, Nepeta swung a punch at Dave, which he expertly dodged by not moving at all. Her hand went through his face, and temporarily disrupted it, like a hologram. "Jerk," she spat.

"Hey, easy; we're all friends here."

"I'm sorry," Rose interjected in a tone that was not particularly sorrowful, "but you two seem to know each other, as well as possess a... _rich_ history. Should I step aside whilst you two settle this, er... dispute?"

"No," Dave and Nepeta insisted, unsettling both in their sudden politeness, and immaculate simultaneity.

"He's just an im-paw-sible asshole," Nepeta added.

"She's just hung up on the past," Dave said at the same time.

Both of them made a face, and neither one indicated mutual agreement over the two statements.

"...I take it you aren't human," Rose said, boldly choosing to lead the conversation elsewhere by displaying basic cognitive functions. Nepeta smiled and performed a small curtsy, while Dave shook his head and lit up a new candy cigarette.

"I'm a skinwalker, as most humans pre-fur to call me. I can take the shape of anything I kill!" The cheery demeanor Nepeta said this with fiercely battled the grimness of her statement, until it reached a stalemate of general psychosis.

"Good to know," Rose said lightly. She swallowed, and fidgeted slightly in midair, still having not yet remembered to land. "You don't...?"

"Kill humans?" The finish caught Rose off-guard, but she nodded. "Not usually. If I want to steal someone's appearance -- or their face, at least -- I just have to make eye contact with them." Nepeta winked again, and Rose felt far more unsettled by the movement of an eyelid in that moment than she ever had before.

"Killing humans is also illegal," Dave added. "In both human law and magical law."

"I could totally get away with it, though."

"Lotsa magical dudes 'n' dudettes could, Neps, including me; most could do it WAY more efficiently too."

Nepeta rolled her eyes, and waved her hands in an enthusiastically sarcastic manner. "Wow, big surprise: the guy with the most magical flexibility as a species can do things others can't!"

"You're just jealous."

Nepeta stuck her tongue out at Dave, and he responded in turn by placing a second candy cigarette between his lips.

"Well," said Rose, hoping to prevent a long silence, "you two certainly have an interesting dynamic."

In time, Nepeta reluctantly retracted her tongue. "It's not a coincidence that you showed up here, is it, Dave?" she probed in a more sobered tone.

"Why can't it be?" Dave added a third cigarette, and considered the fourth in his hand. His speech had yet to be impeded by their presence.

"Be-claws there's no such thing as coincidence with genies."

Dave hesitantly added the fourth cigarette, then briefly removed all of them to blow an expanding cube of smoke. It smelled of artificial citrus flavoring. "Alright _fine,_ " he conceded, "I may or may not have come to this city in particular because I knew you were here and wanted to catch up; that so wrong?"

Nepeta coughed and waved a hand at the smoke, so Rose took the opportunity to speak. "I thought you took us here for the hot tub at the hotel?"

Abruptly, Nepeta sputtered. "You brought her here so you could put her in a hot tub?!"

"Hey, not like _that,_ " Dave snapped.

"Well, you did bring me without my clothes."

"You  _what?!_ " The shock seemed to dissipate the smoke from Nepeta's lungs, and her coughing fit died down in an instant.

Dave gently slid a hand down his face, nearly (but ultimately not) knocking away his sunglasses. "Alright, that's taking things out of context."

"You willfully stripped a girl and then put her in a hot tub, Dave! That's all the context I need!" Nepeta tried for another attack, this time a slap, and it rippled through Dave's face like water. She scowled deeply, and produced an annoyed growl to match, but did not continue the futile exercise.

"You're forgetting the incredibly handy bit of context where I did it because it was funny and annoying above all else," Dave said calmly as his face slowly stopped churning. "It wasn't sexual."

"To be fair," Rose reluctantly admitted, with the hopes of preventing any awkwardly long-term disputes, "it was not especially sexual, and it most definitely was more annoying to experience than anything else."

Nepeta flicked her eyes between Rose and Dave, judging the former for any discrepancies, sharply glaring at the latter, and expertly switching between the two looks with practiced ease.

"Thought you said you were over me," Dave muttered quietly. It was not quietly enough, and he knew it.

"I  _am_ over you, but that doesn't mean you should go chasing after girls like this!"

"Oh, is that so?" Dave asked amusedly, crossing his arms. His expression was now one of entertainment more than angry or challenging. "Because I was just minding my own goddamned business when Rose here said that _she_ had been looking for _me_."

"In the least romantic of senses, if you recall."

"At the end of the day, you still fucked with me first."

Nepeta continued observing her two subjects. "You were looking for him?"

"Well, looking for a genie. I had none in mind, certainly not Dave, but my search did end once I came across him. Admittedly, I may have made a mistake in settling for the first bottom-of-the-barrel bargain deal I found." Nepeta indulgently giggled at this, because it was one of the better insults someone had ever described Dave with. 

"Alright, look," Dave sighed, and swallowed all of his lit cigarettes at once. "It's great that my two absolute bestest 'n' friendliest gal pals in the world are getting to know one another, but you," Dave pointed to Rose, "still got an agenda to force on me that I'd really rather just finish as soon as possible, whereas you," he pointed to Nepeta, "obviously don't wanna stick around with me, so please feel free to head off to wherever you planned on going now that you've reconfirmed for yourself how much of a gigantic asshole I am, and that way we can all just get on with our lives as nature, science, and magic all intended. Yeah?" he ended, looking between them and hoping for agreement.

Rose and Nepeta shared a look, and despite their mutual lack of all forms of telepathy, they smiled in unison. Dave did his best not to frown at this troubling development, and found the effort insubstantial.

"You know," said Rose coolly, "nothing says my 'agenda' must come to pass so quickly. In fact, I see absolutely no reason why I cannot take it slow, and simply relax while I mull over all my intended wishes." Dave managed not to frown harder at this, but similarly failed to relent in his frowning.

"And," Nepeta added, in a much calmer tone of voice than mere moments ago, "there's nothing wrong with meeting mew people. You wouldn't be op-paw-sed to having me fur company, would you, Rose?"

"Not at all," Rose said sincerely. "It's been a while since I made a new friend. Dave is, after all, more of an acquaintance, or perhaps more akin to a business partner; to find someone new outside of that formal setting could do me wonders, socially."

Dave sighed, and shook his head. "I see what you two are trying to do here. And I get it: serves me fucking right for opening my big mouth. How fuckin' _dare I_ voice my opinions -- my circumstantially negative opinions at that, god for-fuckin'-bid -- when doing so would clearly oppress two lovely young ladies such as yourselves? _Please,_ go right on ahead and reprimand my sorry ass; teach me the unforgivable error of my lost and misguided ways."

"With pleasure," Rose said with a purr, incidentally completely catching Nepeta's attention. In her experience, few people were capable of pulling off any sort of legitimate purr, especially outside of the natural felidae family; Rose, however, sounded like one of the capable few, and she mentally nodded in silent approval.

There was a short pause, and another sigh escaped Dave, quieter this time. "Fuck me," he muttered, because it finally reoccurred to him that sarcasm was entirely ineffective against people who chose to interpret him literally.

Both girls politely declined, but at Nepeta's behest, set off to find a new nighttime establishment of entertainment. The night was still young, after all, and the two of them had already found a common interest in serving Dave his own medicine.


	5. His Own Medicine (Just a Taste)

Throughout the following European night, Rose and Nepeta would come to find they had much more in common than the interest of antagonizing Dave, including but not limited to: the general appreciation of all cats; the appreciation of the fact that Nepeta can, at any time, assume the shape and qualities of a large variety of cats; the lament of just how many felines were, unfortunately, killed to make the previous a possibility; fondness for certain alcohols, as with a distinct abhorrence of others; and an advanced interest in several similar philosophical concepts, of magical origin and not.

The conversations which uncovered these mutual interests proved to be more engaging than the settings in which they were held, a short list which ultimately came to include a stiffly high-class restaurant, a bar of above-average non-seediness, and a four star hotel which made no legitimate effort to indicate that it truly was a four star hotel. The overall lack of any particularly exciting events at these establishments was disheartening, but given that they made each visit entirely free of charge, thanks to Dave, the effect proved negligible.

When their citywide journey came to its relative end at the hotel, only Nepeta and Rose had any intoxication to speak of; Dave, despite drinking every strong liquor and liver-demolishing tonic the girls could think to have him try, remained staunchly sober. It was not an immunity, nor a natural ability, but a simple sprinkle of magic.

Drunk genies are enough of a hazard off the clock, but while professionalism of any kind is scarcely important to genies anywhere, it is a well-known fact that many magical beings are much more willing to "accidentally" break laws both magical and not while under the influence of alcohol. It is thus impossible for a genie to be both self-respecting and inebriated while on-duty, and Dave happened to be the sort that, in the absence of others doing it for him, actually tried respecting himself now and then.

Something interesting Dave learned that night, firmly cemented in his mind by the time they had all checked in at the hotel, was that while Rose and Nepeta both became more inclined to make innuendo at him as they ingested more alcohol, neither really became any more willing to follow up on the suggestive thoughts they produced.

It was nothing he came to make a mental note of because he had been, say, attempting to bed one of them, as he had in fact not been attempting this; rather, it was incredibly difficult not to notice that as soon as one of them had decided it would be unthinkably clever to tease him, the other was equally inclined to believe it would be a good idea, and once they were too far gone from sobriety to remember what their other mutual interests were, their conversation turned into a constant pull on the single person who was obligated to stay by them.

"You know," Nepeta had said while they walked down a hotel corridor, facing Rose but slyly regarding the genie hovering along in front of them, "once, he told me that nothing beats 'doing it' while flying." The hushed tone in which she said this suggested that it was some form of terrible government secret, and had been kept that way for the past thirty odd years, minus today's shocking unveiling.

"Is that so?" Rose asked in response, with an eyebrow that quirked itself a little too high, and seemed to be attempting to escape her forehead altogether.

Nepeta paused, seeming to deeply think about this for a moment. "It is."

Had he not already learned how pointless it was to try, Dave might have defended himself during the following silence they provided for him to do just that in. Ultimately, he resisted the temptation.

"I'm not surprised," Rose continued when Dave failed to join in. "Admittedly, I could see it; I've only had a brief taste of flight, but a feeling of weightlessness could... _potentially_ ," she added in an unsure tone, so as not to suggest that Dave was actually onto something here, "increase the benefits derived from... a number of sexual acts."

A loll in the conversation presented itself as neither of the two girls knew whether Rose was supposed to continue weighing Dave's statement, or if Nepeta was yet supposed to respond again, and it caused several false starts between them, which invariably led to fits of stifled snickers and giggling.

It was cut short when Dave flatly announced, "We're here," and swiped a key card at the door of their hotel room. He held it open for both of them, and reality perfectly met expectation when neither of them thanked him for the courtesy, instead walking past him with the specific level of drunken snootiness that doggedly screamed between slurs of voice, "Oh, is there someone else here? I can't see them; no, clearly not, no matter how much I look around and more or less exactly avoid one spot in the room, so it's best not to dwell on the invisible force that may or may not be precisely right over there, and instead ignore it."

The hotel room they checked out (read: wished for Dave to check out) was a simple one-room-one-bathroom little thing that held two tacky beds side by side, each sitting under a framed twenty-five dollar picture of a fifteen dollar painting. Opposite the entrant door, a large curtained window took up most of the wall, while a television sat on a simple wooden television stand at the foot of the two beds. A small desk and a chair occupied half of the room's corner near the window, but the two must have been deeply frightened by it at some point, as both were huddled up closely beside the television.

The group had considered shooting for something classier, not just in overall hotel quality but also in individual room quality, however Rose and Nepeta had come to the brilliant conclusion that they did not want to draw any unnecessary attention to themselves. This was despite the fact that they had Dave get their room key for them while they daringly "hid" behind a thin lobby chair, and the fact that, as Dave told them numerous times, it would be no harder for him to get them a suite than something "inconspicuous on the second floor."

Both refused to listen, instead insisting that, because Rose was the one making the wishes here, not Dave, never mind who was granting the stupid things, it should be up to her. Nepeta, of course, acted faithfully as her adviser by telling Rose what choices to make, and what choices not to make, because they were dealing with Dave here and in case mew didn't know, he was a genie of all things, and genies are a paw-fully mischievous bunch who will deceive you if you're not careful. Rose played along, because the alcohol in her saw nothing wrong with their silly games, and so here they were.

"It's a shame," Rose said idly once she had settled on the bed closer to the window, which meant awkwardly flopping down on top of the covers and lying there. If she intended to make clear what was so shameful, the notion was lost as soon as she said it; she remained totally silent afterward, even when Nepeta climbed onto the same bed with her.

"I hope mew don't mind," Nepeta said with a small hiccup, sidling up against Rose to the point that she wound up halfway sprawled atop her. "It gets cold at night, and I could use the warmth of another purr-son." Belatedly, she winked, attempting to convey a detailed message of precisely how much she was trying to bother Dave by doing this. Given that every single one of her winks tonight had meant this same message, once they had become tipsy enough, Rose did not find it hard to decipher.

"I don't mind," and Rose proved it by draping an arm across Nepeta's back, holding her close. "I actually used to have a kitten, you know, which I would cuddle with almost every night. Warmly, under the covers, usually in a minimum of sleepwear -- especially on the warmer summer nights."

At this time, both girls looked over in unison to gauge Dave's reaction. They were disappointed to find that he had thrown himself onto the second bed, already adopting a carefree position of relaxation. He not only failed to look over and acknowledge their absolutely scandalous behavior, but he even had the gall to turn on the television, flicking through several of the channels to find the one with the least concentration of static.

"...Y'know, sometimes," Nepeta reminisced quietly, "I look back on the past, and think about how things might have been if they were... dif-fur-ent, I s'-paws." Her voice was strangely lacking in noticeable slurs, and nearly sounded sober and contemplative enough for Dave to look over. Nearly. "...But then I stop doing that," Nepeta continued, louder and with a toothy grin, "and I enjoy the present as it is!" Both of Nepeta's arms wormed their way under Rose, locking them into even tighter an embrace, and to their credit, the two appeared content even without Dave looking over and reacting in a wildly disapproving manner.

Dave knew perfectly well what they were doing, and what they intended to accomplish by doing it, but he refused to give them the reaction they wanted. At this point, their attempts had already dwindled from anything meaningful that _could_ elicit a reaction from him to acts like Nepeta "casually" putting her hand somewhere on Rose's body, or saying something wistful about a threesome and how it was too bad no one was around to be their third, or, apparently, just snuggling up together on the same bed. _That_ ought to show him they meant business.

In truth, the last one was something of a blessing; having a bed to himself was a bigger luxury than Dave had expected, and right now he felt the need to enjoy it while he could.

As if aware of this, Nepeta seemed to rapidly become bored with waiting on a reaction from Dave. This seemed to be the case because something was poking Dave's arm, and it did not take incredible peripherals to know that it was Nepeta's hand.

"Hey," she grumbled, still prodding him. "You better still be awake. I'm not done purr-laying with you yet." That had not originally meant to be a cat pun, because sober Nepeta most certainly had standards, but sober Nepeta was not around right now and so it happened, slurred and without censor.

Dave gave no response, and continued staring at the television which, he had ultimately decided, actually looked rather pleasant on this channel of static in particular. He had at some point decided to reverse his static-based goals entirely, and was currently watching what he believed was the most concentrated amount of static the television had to offer.

Soon, the poking turned to shoving, which eventually devolved into a primitive contest of strength as Nepeta tried to heave Dave off his bed. The efforts sooner caused Nepeta to fall with a thud from her shaky position on the opposite bed than budge Dave at all, but as soon as Nepeta proved that she was capable of physically injuring herself in her childish pursuits, Dave decided enough was enough.

Gracelessly and with robotic precision, he got up, gently picked Nepeta up off the floor and immediately put her back down on the second bed, waved goodbye to both of the girls once, flicked off the lights, and walked into the closet.

A period of about two minutes passed while both girls looked between the door he disappeared behind, the mesmerizing glow of the staticky television, and each other, as though they had suddenly lost all purpose in life.

"...He knows that was the closet, right?" Rose eventually asked, not withholding her confusion.

"He purr-obably knows," Nepeta replied, and her expression turned slowly bitter. "He has to. Genies ne-fur do anything fur no reason. I bet he's doing something in there."

"Maybe he's just tired," Rose said, shrugging, and not completely unwilling to end their pranking there for the night.

"Or, he's doing something in there," Nepeta reiterated.

Another minute of silence in static-lit darkness passed before Nepeta's patience reached its limit, and she finally scrambled off the bed, nearly fell again but didn't, and swung open the closet door.

Inside were three coat hangers, in neat disarray on a single horizontal pole, and an empty shelf just above.

No matter how much Nepeta examined the individual boring and insignificant details of the confined space, she could not find a single trace of Dave anywhere inside, and her expression darkened more and more the longer his presence escaped her.

"And...?" Rose asked, unable to see much of anything from her position, never mind the darkness.

"He's not in here," Nepeta said. She even waved her arm around inside, verifying that he was not hiding in plain sight. "Oh, well," she sighed, "I guess he's just gonna be a grumpybutt off on his own."

Nepeta nearly settled back down on the empty bed, but, spitefully, decided to join Rose again.

"I thought you said he wasn't in there? We don't have to keep up the act if he's not around."

"He's not. I wasn't lying about the warmth thing, though."

Reluctantly, Rose settled in under the covers with Nepeta, who pulled her into an embrace once more, this time from the side. The two of them found sleep quickly, despite the television's white noise -- or perhaps because of it. (It could also have been due to the fact that they were absolutely plastered, and generally exhausted from walking around everywhere, so as to specifically spite Dave's teleportation abilities whilst enjoying their drunken stupor; but who's to say?)

\---

When Rose awoke the following morning, a foul, musty tang was caught in her mouth, and the static of the television sounded far louder than it had been last night. Light was shining in from the window, aggravating in the fact that it chose to shine directly onto Rose's face, and nowhere else. Not even on Nepeta, who was--

Rose realized Nepeta was missing entirely from her previous spot beside her, which presented itself as a scenario both favorable and not. She was suddenly missing, which was a small shame because from what Rose recalled she had been rather nice to talk with, but on the bright side, Rose would not have to wrestle her way out of a sleeping girl's hug today.

With care, grogginess, and a distinct mental thump which reminded her every few seconds just how much alcohol she chose to ingest the previous night, Rose shuffled under the covers until they were off her, and got up. Slender hand valiantly guarding her face, she walked over and adjusted the curtains, which stubbornly refused to sit in a fully closed position for all but the most extreme of her attempts, constantly egging her on to try more and more forceful measures as her previous tries failed.

Before she could give up on the cumbersome cloth, a tiny, squeaky yawn sounded out behind her, to which Rose turned sharply around. A small Calico kitten could be seen, resting where thick blankets had previously been draped on the left side of her bed, and of course it was busy yawning. It smiled at Rose a moment after, which Rose found exceedingly adorable, because most cats never smiled; they just maintained their indifference and, at best, purred whenever someone gave them the affection they knew they inherently deserved.

"Good morning, Nepeta."

The kitten let out a high-pitched mewl in response, and then stretched. As it did so, its frame steadily grew, its fur receded in most places, and overall the transformation looked far stranger than it needed to because the kitten had yawned again during, and the growth of its open mouth struck Rose as deeply unsettling.

When the changes finished, Nepeta was there, immediately flopping over onto her side, and fully dressed in what she had been wearing last night.

It would have been terribly stupid if skinwalkers could not preserve their outfits when shifting forms, you know. Many exceedingly young skinwalkers changed without their clothing, but only because they did not yet know how to do otherwise. The secret to skinwalking is, in essence, knowing that it revolves around choosing from different biological snapshots, all of which can include materials that are not a factually biological part of them.

The true magic of their abilities, besides the whole "take the shape of anything they kill" bit, is the fact that skinwalkers can preserve the forms they take entirely, in both the physical states they leave them in when they 'walk' in other skins, and in never allowing those states to fundamentally change while they are being used. Skinwalkers are, as a result, wholly capable of immortality, able to prevent aging and grievous injuries in both their animal and human* forms -- once they nail down how to do it.

Notably, very few skinwalkers are known for achieving immortality by remaining in strictly human form, but instead for spending their time in various animal bodies, coming to understand the signs of aging and how to prevent their causes. On a related note, seldom can a skinwalker truly eradicate a form they have taken from their collection, and often, like strong memories, each and every one of their forms will stick with them until their death, should death ever reach them. As a result, many skinwalkers will have a number of nearly dead forms permanently associated with them even if they do not intend to experience immortality, due to the short lifespans of many animals.

The ability to assume various useful forms for unnaturally great amounts of time is often what drives a skinwalker to unlock the secrets to shape-preservation, more so than indefinite life. It is much more convenient, countless skinwalkers have found, to learn to become a bird and maintain its youth than it is to kill a new bird every few years for continued use of their natural flight. If constantly killing birds did not bother them, having a "memory" full of birds ready to die of old age would.

Nepeta was, as it happened, a rather experienced skinwalker who knew material preservation and, as proven by successfully staying alive for several hundred years, the secrets to immortality. She frequently used these secrets to look permanently twenty two in her natural form, because it was a good way to find funny human boys who would say funny things to her and buy her expensive drinks.

"Mornin', Rose." Nepeta closed her eyes again, resting peacefully on the bed, and it looked as though she would be heading back to sleep when, suddenly, she jolted back up, looking around the hotel room with frantic urgency. "Where's Dave?"

"He's... I'm not sure," Rose admitted, thinking on the subject as much as her dully thudding mind would allow. "We never did find where he went last night; he simply entered the closet and vanished."

Remembering this, Nepeta bounded over from the bed to the closet door again, flinging it open and staring inside at exactly the same interior it had been last night. She grunted in mild frustration, then dizzily took two steps back and sat on the bed behind her. It was too early in the morning, with too much of a splitting hangover-induced headache, for her to be leaping from beds and rapidly opening doors.

"I'm sure he's around. It's only been a day, but I don't feel like he's the sort to run off completely, not when I've still got wishes left."

"Yeah." Nepeta sounded distinctly sullen, and flopped backwards onto the bed.

Rose fussed with the curtains a little more, eventually managing to mostly close them by slightly overlapping them towards the bottom, and allowing friction to keep the thick material in place.

When that was done, Rose decided she really had nothing better to do in a hotel room, and checked the closet for herself. Its door was still wide open, and indeed the closet interior still closely resembled that of an ordinary closet interior, because that is precisely what it was. "Dave?" she called, just in case he could hear her. No response came, and she closed the door. Nothing seemed fundamentally 'off' about the door or the space behind it, but it was still a small curiosity as to where, exactly, her genie had gone by walking inside last night.

"I _hope_ he's still around," Rose added, reassuring herself less confidently than she had earlier.  "I still intend to use my remaining wishes."

A grumble escaped Nepeta, and nothing else, so naturally Rose sat down beside her and tried to chat her up. "How did you two meet, anyhow? If you don't mind talking about it, that is."

"It was a long time ago," Nepeta said after some time, and then remained quiet for another half a minute, staring at the ceiling. Eventually, she shifted, sitting upright and turning to face Rose. "It wasn't anything special," she continued, but then frowned. "I mean... it  _felt_ special, when it happened, y'know, like any good relationship, but I don't think it was anything super-duper spectacular in the end."

"I wouldn't really know," said Rose, shrugging and flashing a small smile like it was a proudly-owned card indicative of her social shortcomings. "But go on."

"We fur-st crossed paths a few hundred years ago. I was in a forest, nowhere near where I had been born; not even on the same continent. I was honing my skills as a huntress there, as... a wolf, I think, pouncing on bunnies and stalking little squirrels... I didn't kill all of them, and I didn't take the skins of every animal I killed, but I hunted everything I could, like most young skinwalkers.

"Of course, any hunter or huntress _always_ has a time in their life when they become the hunted, no matter how talented. There were trap-purrs and human hunters around, had been fur a while, and I knew how to avoid them and even beat them at their own game, but... honestly, I had no pre-purr-ations against  _Dave_. I still think he cheated," she spat sourly,  "used a net that was invisible until I stepped on it, or subtly pushed me into it in ways I had no defense against, but he caught me.

"When it fur-st happened, I was terrified; I had never been caught before, but I knew all the stories of what could happen to me. I knew what it was like to skin another animal, but not what it was like to _be_ skinned, and I didn't exactly wanna find out. I saw him a-purr-oach while I was struggling, and he had this smug grin on his face, like he knew exactly what he wanted out of me, where along my skin he was going to cut and take me apart; it made me squirm and thrash even more. And then...

"...then, he just stopped. Stood still in front of me, looked me over, and said, 'Oh, sorry,' like he accidentally bumped into someone in a crowd. He cut the net, and as soon as I hit the ground I bolted away at full sprint; he still looked like a hunter, had still caught me, and fur all I knew he just wanted something to chase... but that was it. I didn't hear his pounding footsteps behind me, and when I turned around, he was just walking away, not a care in the world.

"A long time passed between then and when we fur-st... officially got together, I guess, but I followed him fur a long time, be-claws he was clever enough to be the fur-st to catch me, but still never took my life. I wanted to know why, maybe how, to see if he could teach me anything.

"Honestly, it was dumb, and I purr-obably should have wound up dead doing that. Eventually, though, I worked up the nerve to ap-purr-oach him, rather than just tag along some distance behind, and he looked right at me as soon as I tried, like he always knew I was there. He offered me food, let me sit by the campfire with him, and told me I didn't have to disguise myself around him.

"We talked a lot, and it was new to me; I had talked to other skinwalkers before, but no one else, and suddenly there was this guy who had managed to snap me up in a trap without even trying, who didn't seem to care about anything at all; 'life' and 'the world' were just concepts to him, that barely had any effect on him, and he did what he did simply be-claws he could. It was surreal, but we talked, and talked, and... I grew fond of him. I don't know if he thought of me the same way I did of him, but we hung around together; I pushed a little, and he never pushed at all, and it all just built up from there.

"It was... fun, fur a long time," Nepeta admitted, somewhat hesitant. "I don't know. Dave's not a bad guy, I don't think, but even when you're close to him... even when I was, anyway, he just..." Nepeta scrunched up her face, seemingly about to spit something foul out, but never did. A soft sigh washed the grim expression away. "He's really distant, no matter how close you think you are to him. We had fun, but it didn't last, and fur me it was be-claws he always had this air of knowing something you didn't, even if you asked him about it.

"And I know he has it fur a reason; it took me a while to figure out, but he never does anything without a good reason to, or an elaborate plan driving behind it. He acts like this aloof dork -- and honestly, I think he still is -- but he's always either got somethin' to hide, or some secret machination he's toying with, and after a while I couldn't take living with what I didn't know; a constant element of surprise and suspense wasn't as interesting to me as it was him. He didn't fight me on it, and we went our se-purr-ate ways, just as easily as we had once come together." Nepeta shrugged.

"So, you certainly have a past between you," Rose said, asserting her possession of basic listening capabilities. Nepeta nodded.

"I don't regret it, not really, but I don't think he's the kind of guy I could stick around with fur-ever. Not romantically. Not quite. It just took me some time to realize that, just be-claws he was the fur-st purr-son I ever felt something fur, didn't mean we were destined to be together."

"That's a little sad," Rose said with a frown. "I don't blame you, though. And at least you didn't break up over anything especially awful or tragic."

"Yeah," said Nepeta, but it lacked conviction. "He's still fun to tease, though," she said on a brighter note, "no matter what your past is with him."

"Undoubtedly."

Following that discussion, Rose had been about to try changing the television channels, to see for herself if even one had a decent absence of static, but it was an effort cut short by the closet door unexpectedly creaking open.

" _Fuck,_ " said Dave as he exited the space behind it, stretching his back with audible pops. He wore an abundantly fluffy red bathrobe, with excessively puffy crimson socks and slippers to match. In his hand was a brick-colored mug, full of a steaming milky blue liquid, while his sunglasses remained ever-present upon his face. The closet interior looked distinctly larger past him, in fact not like a closet interior at all, but Dave quickly closed the door behind him before Rose or Nepeta could get a good look inside. "Hey, mornin'; you two asshats done makin' pitiful attempts at the jealousy game yet?"

"I dunno," Nepeta said without missing a beat, "I haven't even tried kissing Rose yet, and there's still so much else to try doing together." She began counting on her fingers, "showering, candlelit dinners at midnight, sleeping together -- oops, wait, scratch that last one; we already did it last night."

"Wow," Dave said without enthusiasm, and began sipping from his mug of exotically-cerulean coffee. "You really know just how to pick the most hopeless motherfuckin' nerds to pine for, don'cha?"

Nepeta opened her mouth as she tried to form a response to that, but quickly realized Dave had already beat her to the punchline before she could even start the joke.

"Hopeless?" Rose sounded offended, which was partially true, but not nearly as true as she made it sound. 

"I don't recall stuttering in the past ten seconds."

"You did; it was precisely when the sounds coming out of your mouth formed the word 'hopeless' instead of anything more flattering."

"You keep tellin' yourself that, honey." Sip. "But seriously now, are we going to get the party train a'rollin', maybe go grab some breakfast or actually _do_ shit? I don't have a busy schedule to adhere to, but I'd rather not be a third wheel to you two enjoying each other's company instead of making wishes. I have magical soaps to keep up with."

"Do you, now?"

"Nah, not really; they're all out already and I really only watch them to bide my time, which is exactly why I can't bingewatch them, because then what the fuck am I going to do while you're indiscriminately dragging your feet, ass, and other bodily parts across all manner of flooring in an attempt to prove you're as shiningly excellent at wasting your limited time on this earth just as much as my own?"

Rose stared at Dave, mostly impressed that he could say such a long sentence without taking a breath, and he stood there, unwavering, sipping his magical coffee. "I'm sorry; that might'a been too harsh for lil' young human you, but the point is I'm your genie, not your manservant. I'm here to grant wishes until they run out, not act like your personal plaything."

"But given that I have a theoretically limitless supply of wishes that could never run out...?"

"Given that," Dave said with a nod of acknowledgement, "you're a fucking asshole, and you're wasting my time every second you're not making a wish. _Fuck_ ," he said especially loudly, shaking his head, "if you think about it, you're _still_ wasting my time, because I could already be granting regrettable wishes to other people right about now; but nooooo, fuck that and fuck all things genies grant wishes for, you need to hog me all to yourself like the lustily selfish goddamn human you are."

"He's just bitter be-claws he's not a morning person," Nepeta said quietly to Rose. 

"Incorrect," Dave said without even turning to address her, "I am bitter because Janice told Lauren that she isn't actually in lesbians with her, and is instead secretly-secretly _not_ -gay for Gerald, and that's just some straight-up bullshit. They worked so well together, and she gives her up for _him?_ Bullshit." Sip.  "I didn't wanna keep watching right after seeing that, so I came back out here."

"Have you been watching your 'magical soaps' all night, then?"

"Not in the sense that I've been in there for eight straight hours; naw, see, thanks to the magic of door-bound pocket dimensions, I just decided to come out of there at about this time in this dimension. I was only in there for like an hour and a half."

Nobody questioned this, as it was perfectly plausible for Dave to do in both Rose's limited experience and Nepeta's exceedingly great experience.

"You know," Dave continued, "honestly I'm starting to question whether you actually had any 'heavy lifting' for me to do at all, and were in fact just trying to come off as intimidating when you said that." Sip.

"No," assured Rose, "I still have plans for my wishes beyond a free night at, er... whatever this place was called."

"Aha, see? It's not that easy remembering their names. But uh, yeah, feel free to make an actually-meaningful wish any time within the next twenty years. Eternal youth, world dictatorship, unlimited supply of apple juice, _something_  worth wishing for."

Rose thought about this for a long while, because she _had_ more or less entirely failed to make any powerful wishes the previous night, never mind the time she wasted sleeping. ...There was an idea.  "I wish to never require sleep again."

"Done," Dave said, and the sound of snapping fingers occurred despite his right hand holding a cup of coffee, and his left being loosely stuffed in a bathrobe pocket. No number appeared, but this was because Dave had gotten tired of that gimmick; so long as Rose's wishes were without any concrete limit, it was excessively useless in its purpose of frightening humans into frantically managing their wishes.

"I don't feel any different."

"You just woke up after a full night's rest; how the fuck do you expect to feel?"

Rose conceded that she had not expected to feel much of anything, and they all left it at that.

"Back to breakfast, I am actually getting purr-etty hungry," Nepeta said, nudging Rose. 

"As am I, but now I'm wondering whether I want to rid myself of the need to eat, in addition to sleep."

"There's a free fuckin' breakfast downstairs," Dave said, "just eat now and figure out what gross biological necessities you do and don't want after."

The three all agreed that this would be a reasonable enough start to their morning, and after Rose wished for both Nepeta's and her own hangover to be cured, they headed down.

Connected to the lobby downstairs was a small rectangular room which served all of the typical breakfast foods these sorts of rooms typically served. Inside, Rose settled for a single waffle, plus syrup, which meant that she sat down at an empty table first. Nepeta, meanwhile, greedily hoarded several portions of miscellaneous pastries, and growled at the stranger who foolishly thought he could reach over and grab one of the publicly-available foodstuffs without negative consequence. Dave simply reclined in a floating chair built for exactly that purpose, and because it would make people less likely to walk through him, he had positioned his seat so that it sat on the ceiling. A newspaper subtly disappeared from the nearby basket that had been holding it, which was because it then appeared in Dave's lap, and he worked on the crossword puzzle it had.

By the time Nepeta settled at Rose's table with her plate, stacked high with sugar-coated breads and flaky fluffy snacks, Rose had already eaten a third of her waffle. She chewed thoughtfully for several more moments, dragging her fork through the syrup, and once she swallowed, said, "Dave, how easy would it be for you to use magic and... rework my digestive system so that food is entirely unnecessary, but still edible without negative consequence?"

"Depends on whether you still wanna poop after you eat," Dave said distractedly, chewing on the tip of his pen, and then jotting a word down on the puzzle. "It'd be pretty fuckin' complicated either way, but I don't really expect you to give a shit about that; wishes are all about instant gratification, after all."

"You're right; I'd rather not defecate at all anymore, if I can help it."

"It's the way to go," said Nepeta, and strangely not Dave. If there had been any effect to her words, it was lost entirely in that it was said with a mouth half-full of food, and in fact that it was said at all. 

"Don't forget the magic word," Dave reminded Rose, before writing something else on his newspaper. Decidedly, his puzzle was coming along rather nicely.

Rose thought about it a little longer, considered the sparse scattering of nearby strangers who could possibly overhear her, reminded herself that she was invisible and inaudible to all of them(which probably made the waffle-eating look strange, but at this point she hardly cared), and finally said, "I wish to live healthily without ever functionally requiring food as sustenance, or defecating as a biological process, and I wish to live without harmful consequence should I continue to eat."

Dave threw his pen at Rose, and it startled her more than anything as it bounced off her head and landed on her plate. He then, free of anything in his hands, snapped his fingers.

Rose once again felt no real noticeable change within her, but that was not what immediately concerned her. "Why did you throw your--"

"I ran out of places to write 'dicks' on my crossword."

"Ah," Rose said placidly, "of course. The logical conclusion."

Breakfast continued peacefully for some time after that exchange, as Rose tactfully ignored the pen in her syrup, and Nepeta consumed her food with the voracity of approximately eleven and three quarters adorable kittens. It was a difficult calculation to make, given the relatively small stomach size and appetite of the average adorable kitten, but Rose did her best with the information she had.

Over time, Rose did notice that she no longer had any appetite whatsoever, and the chunks of waffle sitting in her stomach felt much more foreign to her than they had previously. The remaining half of her waffle went uneaten, and she took the liberty of scraping it off her plate into a nearby wastebin.

"I think I'd like to go home now."

"What?" asked Dave immediately, who had now taken to folding the pages of his newspaper into origami shapes. The shapes mostly consisted of rectangles and crude circles and, well, simply put, they were origami penises. "How can you want to leave so soon? We arrived here yesterday; it hasn't even been a full twenty four hours yet."

"Yes, well, I never really wanted to partake in this sudden excursion to Europe to begin with, and I would very much like to relax in a familiar environment, perhaps spruce it up with your help. A neat and tidy base of operations sounds like a reasonable 'goal,' no matter what I pursue after it, does it not?"

"I honestly don't care," said Dave, shaking his head. His sunglasses fell upwards from his face to the clutches of gravity in response to this motion, revealing a perfectly identical pair underneath. Several more then fell, each revealing the next pair ready to fall. It rung true that Dave absolutely adored his cantrips.

This one got old, he decided, after six seconds had passed and twenty one pairs had fallen, all in a pile on the table and the floor, at which point he simultaneously blinked himself and his chair out of existence, and then blinked himself back into existence, standing upright next to Rose. His bathrobe had been replaced by a pair of red flannel pajama pants and a slightly brighter bulky red sweatshirt. "Ready when you are."

"Do you mind if I come too?" Nepeta asked, neatly dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a napkin. Her plate sat before her, totally empty, and she smiled pleasantly.

It occurred to Rose that she had not considered travel options for her friend -- and at this point, she had very much come to consider Nepeta her friend -- and that she would be delighted if Nepeta came along.

"I don't mind." Nepeta smiled a little more, but allowed Rose to continue speaking. "I wish for myself, along with Nepeta here, to be in my apartment in New York."

"Bam," Dave said unenthusiastically, waving his arm in a glittering flourish, "you are."

And so they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Technically, the natural form of a skinwalker is just "skinwalker," but due to the visual similarities between their natural form and humans, it is not social taboo to refer to their natural form as human-like. It is, however, considered impolite among the more snobbish of skinwalkers, and any other politically-correct magical beings, so it is not a convention which should ever be used lightly.


	6. A 'Neat and Tidy' Base of Operations

"So these are your digs, huh?" Dave asked right away, taking in the surroundings.

Rose frowned. "Dave."

"Hafta admit, didn't think your place would be this nice; I was expecting something way smaller and totally crawling with cats."

Rose crossed her arms. "Dave."

"It's just that it made the most sense after you were hanging out with Nepeta so much -- and with her hanging out with you, like you just inherently got the scent of catnip on you."

This time, Nepeta joined Rose. "Dave."

"Oop, actually, is that a fine little feline right over there?"

"Dave."

"I see you little guy; that table does not hide you nearly as well as you think it does."

" _D_ _a_ _v_ _e._ "

"Look, I get it," Dave said, waving a hand at his two cohorts without directly facing them, and in fact while walking away, "you're both almost-naked and you want to show me, but I'm just not interested. Is that a wine cabinet?"

Both girls sighed, because they were both lamenting their inability to physically harm Dave. He had, once again, thrown implications into the wind and taken his passengers without their clothing. Neither were particularly happy with this development, despite the fact that both had prior experience with it.

"I wish for my outfit, as well as Nepeta's, to appear beside us."

"Aw, what," Dave called from the other room, "you don't want a pile of clothes to be your calling card? I really thought it'd catch on."

" _Now_ , Dave. I already made the wish."

"Alright, alright; keep your headband on." It was, as before, all that Dave had left Rose; Nepeta, meanwhile, only had her fur pelt, which entirely failed to cover anything beyond her shoulders and collarbone. The familiar snapping of fingers sounded soon afterward, and the rest of their disheveled attire appeared beside them.

Rose had a slight reservation, once again fearing any number of potential undesirable acts having been done to her clothing, but Nepeta began getting dressed right away, and her bold will inspired Rose. At least they had been indoors this time, and not standing on a filthy sidewalk.

"So what's her name? Or his." Dave paused, and checked. "...Her, cat's a her. Her name?"

"Please don't touch my cat."

"Eh, I've heard better for that many syllables. Like 'Caramellian'; fuckin' beautiful cat, too, all tortoiseshell and just fluffy as hell to _absolutely_ absurd degrees."

"Unhand the cat, Dave."

"'Unhand the cat'; what do you mean, 'unhand' it? The hell do you think I'm doing over here?" Factually, Dave was sitting cross-legged under the table in the other room, holding his hand out while a short-haired black cat affectionately rubbed its head against him. "You're talking like I'm holding the cat against its will. I'm not; it's the one nudging up against me. You gonna tell the cat it's not allowed to be friendly? Should I forbid Nepeta from hanging out with you, too?"

"Whatever you are doing with my cat, against its will or not, please stop it."

Dave, because he felt amiable right now, and because Rose had been drastically polite thus far, drew his hand away from the cat.

Given that his female companions were still redressing, and he had time to kill before they finished, Dave decided to take a quick personal tour around Rose's apartment. His findings were as follows:

The apartment had, in total, four rooms. The rooms consisted of an open living room, where Dave had brought everyone, a small bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen and dining area combination. (The kitchen and dining area could each have been considered their own room, but there was no real point to the distinction when there was no wall between them; it was one room, Dave was sure, no more and no less.) A short hallway connected the living room to the bedroom and bathroom, while only a vacant doorway connected the opposite side of the living room to the dining area.

On the dining half of this singular room, a small round wooden table was being guarded by a disgraceful entourage of only two chairs, all sitting on imitation hardwood flooring. A standing cabinet, which in fact did hold wine, was off in the corner, and looked to have a pretty decent selection of at least three bottles. Dave had not given it much attention; the chairs looked as though they were having a difficult time containing the table, and without aid, the table looked ready to bowl them over and run off like the dangerous criminal it surely was.

Dave, as a result, saw fit to bulk the chairs up; should make 'em into something classy, he thought, and thicker than a fucking toothpick sculpture. The resulting chair designs were robustly swirling, mostly along the legs and to a lesser extent up the back, constructed from polished silvery metal and puffy cushioning. When they still looked inadequate as a lone pair, Dave added another identical pair, and then another, for effective table security. Then, just in case the table was packing some extra heat, Dave chained the table's legs to the floor, and magicked the floor into a rough dungeon-quality masonry. That table had no chances of escaping.

In the kitchen, multiple counter segments were arranged in two separate choppy lines, all squat, determined, and backed against two opposite walls in a bold display of brave cowardice. They seemed tense, ready to charge ahead and meet one another in combat, but none dared to break the peace. Among their ranks were a fridge, an oven, a sink, and a microwave, all of which having been accepted among their respective counters without question.

The fridge, relatively large and modern, sat shyly in the corner, and was much smaller on the inside than the outside. Thoughtfully, Dave remedied this, drawing mild inspiration from a painter he once knew who had mastered creating odd-angled stairs that people were liable to injure themselves on. The sink nearby looked a little jealous when its friend got these improvements, so Dave shared the love, tripling the sink basins under the faucet. For good measure, he added a knob that would alter what came out of the faucet, including (and mostly limited to) apple juice, apple cider, apple sauce, goat's blood, sparkling apple juice, and plain water. The sink would definitely have something to talk about come next strategic war meeting.

Dave heard a new call and, after brief deliberation, began updating the stove and microwave on the opposing counter force. They already possessed decent electronics, but if they were to compete with the extra-dimensional fridge and multi-liquid sink, Dave had no choice but to give them that competitive edge. A special little dial was added to the middle of the stove, and its color scheme shifted from an atrocious blend of white and black to a stylish mix of black and white. The nearby microwave grew several inches taller and gained a few new buttons, the least of which being one that prevented any annoying beeps from escaping it. As an afterthought, Dave removed that button, and instead made the microwave entirely mute. Finally, because all the counters were absolutely clamoring with anticipatory excitement, Dave transformed their bottoms into black-painted wood with metal handles and their tops into smooth speckled stone. Morale was through the roof all around.

At once, Dave decided he was no longer needed here; the bedroom, despite being across the apartment, had stolen his attention now. He moved there with a thought, and found that it was extraordinarily plain, with no real decoration or clutter to mar the dresser, bookshelf, or bed inside. A closed closet door proudly occupied the wall opposite the hall door, and the two seemed to have a deadly-serious rivalry which prevented either one from making any sudden movements. A window isolated itself on its own wall, although it could have easily been an assortment of bricks for all the light it produced, entirely obscured by burly black curtains.

Small and pathetic, the bed begged to become more mighty, so Dave changed it into a bunk out of pity. The kitten-print blanket originally atop it remained on the bottom bunk, while the top received something offensively tropical. The nearby dresser was expanded hesitantly, as genies never saw a real purpose in physical storage solutions, and it shed its original blocky shape for a thinner, more eloquent configuration that could be disassembled entirely with an expertly-placed knock. The bookcase looked too vibrant for a bookcase, and Dave darkened it until it seemed to be a rectangular void in the room, within which numerous books neatly floated in rows. A heavyset matching desk sprouted up from the carpet between the bed and dresser, as the room looked too largely small without one; a chair did not join it, however, as it would have ruined the perfect balance the desk just created.

Dave removed his socks and slippers, and it came to his attention that the carpeting in here had not nearly met the universal standards for softness or length. All of its fibers hastily grew and, because this shade of violet seemed a little too dark, shifted to a pleasant lilac. Suddenly, the light bulb above burst, because Dave realized it had been flickering; its glass shards silently sprinkled and exited reality before they could impact anything, and was replaced by a firmly floating light source which neither required energy nor was capable of physically blinding anyone. Its presence filled Dave with a subtle sense of personal satisfaction, which was not one of its inherent effects; he just happened to hold a particular fondness for this brand of magical lighting.

The bathroom was unarguably the most uninteresting room here, besides being the smallest. Inside, Dave found an ordinary porcelain toilet, unadorned by seat covers and in fact totally undecorated by everything except scant dust. In one corner, next to the toilet and opposite the door, a shallow sink sat below a mirror on its own artificial island, its surface sparsely populated by numerous bottles of bland hygiene products; a tall shower had the ambition to stand alone in the opposite corner, without an accompanying bath tub, and had many scars of calcium deposits and streaks in the glass and tile to show for it.

Given that Rose would no longer need a toilet, Dave considered taking it upon himself to fully remodel the entire room, to make better use of its limited space. There was not enough time, unfortunately, but he considered what Rose would want, so he could provide a single boon as his finishing preliminary touches. In her name, he put up a motivational cat poster, emboldened by a gilded frame and hung nicely on the back of the door. It would be obscured any time the door was open, but that was the hefty price of feline motivation.

Silently, just as Rose finished adjusting her shoes and Nepeta bent down to pet the cat that had wandered in from the dining area, Dave materialized on the ceiling, looking up at the two of them.

"I feel like Dave is being too quiet in there," Nepeta said idly, gently scratching Please Don't Touch My Cat's chin.

"Oh, fuck," Rose acknowledged immediately, because Nepeta was entirely correct.

"Rose, your words -- they wound me," Dave cried with vague hints of dramatic intent, and he clutched his chest emphatically. A red liquid began dripping from under his hand and onto the carpet below just as Rose looked up at him, and she frowned. "How can you be so distrusting of the dude who's literally in charge of making all your wishes come true? Didn't you have a fuckin' childhood to help you believe in all that bullshit?"

Rose sighed, and ignored Dave's comments. "Not even five minutes spent in my home, and you're already staining the carpet with blood. You really do know how to act like a welcome house-guest, Dave."

"Hey, come on; there's no need to be so pessimistic. And just because it's blood doesn't mean it's going to stain, Lalonde." Dave lifted his hand, revealing no residue on his hand or clothing; below, where his color had landed on the carpet, it could barely spread before fading away. In under five seconds all of it had vanished entirely. "Now are you gonna show us around or what? How about in here, actually; what do you want me to improve?"

In the living room, where they currently resided, there was perhaps the most amount of furniture in the entire apartment, but even then it was sparse. A humble brownish-grey loveseat sat before a small, squarish television resting on a cardboard box. (This would have been more impressive if the box was not filled with books, but humans were rarely capable of achieving impressive feats with empty cardboard boxes.) A hutch containing knitting supplies sat against a nearby wall, accompanied by two end tables which really had nothing better to do with their time. Of the three furnishings, none looked ready to stand on their respective feet or thin "modern" stands, and probably should have considered extensive rehabilitation before resuming work. A curvy young lamp stood by the television, in diurnal competition with the large window that took up the wall behind it, and it was clear that the lamp would be proudly lit when night fell and rendered the window purposeless. All of it sat on a calming beige carpet, which looked moderately unclean despite the lack of bloodstains.

"The T.V.?" Dave asked before Rose could think of a response, let alone spit it out. "Could be bigger, maybe pick up more channels and without a box that tells it to. I am even willing to bet that I could make it whatever color you wanted."

"But of course I'd have to make a specific wish for it," Rose observed, "as with anything else I'd like to change."

"Actually -- and you should probably sit your pretty little ass down before I tell you this shocking info, so here," and Dave snapped his fingers, spawning a cushy red armchair behind Rose, before pushing the air between them to knock her into it. "Comfy?" Dave did not wait for a response. "Good; now as I was saying, you can make just one simple wish to encompass all your home-improvement needs!" A complementary set of jazz hands accompanied the given statement, waving themselves ecstatically. Given that they were shaking independently in the air, rather than while remaining attached to Dave's wrists, it lost most of its value for eccentricity in exchange for general eeriness.

"Oh, really?" Rose sounded skeptical, and was perfectly within her right by doing so. Nepeta, meanwhile, sat on the arm of the chair, to make a subtle point of the fact that she would sit wherever she wanted, whether Dave had accommodated her or not.

" _Yes_ really; as it fuckin' turns out," Dave said energetically, returning his hands to his body and clapping them together,  "you're not the first adorable little human to want a new-and-improved abode, nor are you the first to think about trying to conserve your wishes. Lots of people want mansions, mostly, but they always want it decorated and full of _stuff_ , and while most of them have the 'sly' sense to try cramming it all into one wish, it's just a goddamned grammatical nightmare trying to decipher it; so genies have a policy that allows them to take it one improvement at a time, without charging extra wishes for every little detail. Pretty nice of us, right?"

"It sounds like it's more for your own convenience than anyone who makes wishes, so, no, I can't say I think it is too terribly nice of you."

"Hey, when you really think about it, we _are_ the ones making the wishes -- making them come true, anyway. That's gotta count for something." Rose rolled her eyes, shaking her head, and Dave frowned. Nonetheless, he continued.  "Here's the deal: you can make a special wish for all your building and furniture changing or adding needs, one that lets you wish for literally anything -- and without physically saying 'wish' for it, you lucky little evolved monkey you -- so long as it relates to improving your home. And that's it. You don't even have to make a second wish when you're done; it's that effective."

Rose considered this, and surprised herself in thinking that it actually might benefit both the wisher and wish-granter in a given scenario equally, if not in legitimate favor of the wisher. She must not have been thinking clearly. "So, essentially, it's like build mode in the Sims, but without a limit on money, or furnishing options?"

Dave raised his hands, flat and upright. "For magical legal reasons I can't acknowledge what that is or what it means."

"Hm," said Rose, and it was a fairly skeptical 'hm,' but given that it was mild skepticism, not intense in the slightest, she dismissed the subject it had arisen from. "And what wish is this that will grant me access to these powers?"

"Just wish for 'build mode.'"

Rose frowned, and furrowed her brow. "I thought you just said you can't acknowledge that--"

"I _can't_ acknowledge it _because_ it's the same name. Don't get me into magical legal trouble, Rose; it's bad e-fuckin'-nough that you're making sure I have absolutely no free will, and pretty much never will have it again, I don't need magical lawyers on my ass too. Believe me, they're way more vicious than your human stereotypes of regular lawyers, besides generally having two more heads."

"Only generally?"

Dave shrugged. "Some of the higher ups have more. 'S not my place to question it, just to avoid clashes with 'em."

Several moments of contemplation between Rose and Nepeta passed, as they were both clearly unopposed to subjecting Dave to more misfortune. Unspoken thoughts shared the sentiment despite their individual mental isolation, as did multiple shared looks. Ultimately, Rose reached the conclusion that if she let Dave go to any sort of magical court, he might never return, and at that point it would only be all the more difficult to find a new genie. She would not send him to any magical lawyers today.

"Alright. I wish for 'build mode.'"

Dave nodded once, and snapped his fingers. His form disappeared from the ceiling entirely, reappearing beside the armchair dressed in yet another new outfit. A vibrant orange-and-yellow vest made his torso excessively visible, and he appeared to be wearing thick, slightly baggy jeans. Some bulky plastic on his head looked as though it should have been yellow, but remained defiantly red, and could easily have been a crossbreed between a hardhat and a fireman's helmet. Several tools hung around his waist, but none of them were held by any form of belt; instead they idly floated there, ignorant of gravity's effects and not looking to become enlightened. "So whaddaya want, mac?"

"Can I keep this armchair? It is actually rather comfortable."

"...Okay," Dave said after a brief excursion into incredulity. "Yeah, you can keep it. But uh," he said in a conspirational whisper, "you do know I'm here to change and improve things, not just leave them the way they are, right?"

"Make it purple, then."

"That's more like it." Dave withdrew a wide paintbrush from his waist, flicked its bristles through several colors until they stopped on purple, and then pointed it at the armchair. It quickly assumed the color of the brush's bristles.

"Hm. A little darker?"

Dave tilted the brush down, and both the brush's bristles and the chair darkened significantly.

"Oof, no, too dark. Lighter."

He lifted the brush, and the colors grew lighter again.

"Mmm, it still looks off. A bit lighter still?"

The brush was carefully tilted up a little more, and an attentive observer would be able to accurately guess what happened to the colors of what as a result.

"No, you've passed it. Darker again?"

"I'm sorry Rose, do _you_ want to give the brush a try? You seem _abso_ -lutely _fascinated_ with ensuring that it's used for the most trivial fuckin' fragment of its operational use." Dave tossed the brush to land on Rose's lap, and she backed futilely into the chair to avoid it. It struck her, but to her thankful surprise left no color on her, in either the form of wet paint or direct color alteration.

"Somebody's cranky," Nepeta chimed in with a singsong voice, kicking her feet while still sitting on the chair's arm.

"Ain't got nothin' to do with crankiness; if Rose isn't satisfied with my color job, she's more than welcome to try it herself. Go ahead, Rose; brush's all yours."

Rose frowned, but given that simply handing the brush back to Dave would have been a victory in his favor, she accepted the challenge. Gingerly, she lifted the brush from her lap, and was careful not to aim it at herself as she stood. This proved pointless, as the brush affected only the chair regardless of where she directed it, but Rose preferred to err on the side of caution.

After a minute or so of toying with the limited range of color, twisting the brush all around in idle experimentation, Rose found an acceptable shade of purple to stay on. The brush seemed to understand this, as it stopped changing colors once she found it, and Rose smiled proudly. Dave seemed mildly impressed, a notion conveyed by the brief and simultaneous lifting of his eyebrows; he gave no congratulations, however, and simply extended his hand, intending the take the paintbrush back.

"Not bad," he said when Rose handed it over. "You very well may have just mastered choosing a single arbitrary color for a piece of furniture. Your parents must be so proud."

"You believe so, too? Good; I'm not alone in recognizing my own artistic prowess. I think I'd like to recolor quite a bit in here, really, following that delectable taste of aesthetic freedom."

"That's nice; can you save it until after we've figured out what you want, and where? I'll let you go nuts with the three-dimensional coloring book that you've just realized is your apartment, I promise, but first let's just plop down whatever amenities you've been dying to experience in the comfort of your own home."

Rose shrugged casually, looking around. "Thinking on it, I'd say I'm rather satisfied with the number of creature comforts I have already; I think a lengthy recoloring session is in order right now, and no later."

Dave's voice went flat. "You literally told me to bring us here because you wanted me to improve your home, and now you're perfectly fine with everything but the color?"

"Joking, Dave. Maybe you've heard of it."

"Heard immensely better examples, that's for sure."

"Rose, just think about it," interjected Nepeta, "you can have anything at all in your apartment right now, including extra space." Dave frowned at that, but let Nepeta continue. "Knowing that, what do you wanna put in here?"

"Yeah," said Dave in a level of cheer which mocked Nepeta's. "For example: one of those cat furniture playgrounds. Your cat could play on it, and so could that little cutie by your feet." For clarity, Dave pointed towards the small black cat licking its paw near Rose, specifically during the latter half of his sentence.

Nepeta hardly needed any time to process the insult, and swung a new punch at him despite being aware of its ultimate futility. This one was aimed towards his gut, and her arm looked ready to pass through Dave completely when it got caught halfway in, becoming stuck several inches above his navel. Dave shook his head slowly. "Tsk fuckin' tsk, Neps. You gotta jab faster than that if you wanna escape the jelly belly."

Despite several valiant attempts, each made in-between frustrated growls, Nepeta failed to dislodge her arm, and wound up getting her foot stuck as well when she tried to press it against Dave's chest for leverage. Dave's body currently had the arbitrary consistency of rubbery mud, and all of it refused to give. After enough struggling, Nepeta stopped entirely, sighing as she hung limply from where her limbs intersected his torso.

"Dave," Rose said tiredly and without amusement, "let her go."

Dave frowned again, but complied without so much as asking Rose to wish for it. Nepeta immediately fell from Dave with a dull thud, his body rippling softly from the two locations she had struck him. She glared bitterly up at him; he simply smiled and shrugged.

"Now," continued Rose, "if the two of you are quite finished acting like children--"

"Magical children," Dave corrected.

"He started it," Nepeta added sourly.

"--then I would like to request that you remain finished, so I may adequately consider what to fill my home with, and whether I would actually like to keep this home at all."

Dave found it amusing that Rose was trying to wrest control of the situation, despite being the least magical of the three of them, but he gave no opposition. A mock bow indicated his willingness to play nice, even if Nepeta was still scowling at him.

Several mostly-quiet minutes passed from there as Rose slowly wandered around the living room, looking vaguely contemplative at this or that without really focusing on anything in particular. This amused Dave further, because whenever humans usually did this, it was because they had locked up their mind in thinking about something, much like a computer that had experienced a fatal error and, upon deciding that it especially liked the color its screen turned once this occurred, intentionally kept it that way.

As she did so, Nepeta returned her attention to the black cat still in the room, petting it and playing with its paws; Dave produced a new drink for himself, this one a milky white, and slowly drank it in the fashion he normally did, with the same sound and all.

Eventually, before Rose could come to any discernible end to her line of thinking, she paused by the doorway into the dining area. She had just glimpsed into it for the first time today, and her expression indicated a certain lack of positive reactions. "Dave," Rose said, sounding neither mad nor confused, but she easily could have been both and simply forgotten to show it. "What have you done to my table?"

"Made sure it couldn't escape."

"And I don't suppose you would consider it reasonable if I were to ask 'why?'"

"I wouldn't."

"I'll ask anyway for the sake of indulging in my personal insanity: Why? In what way was this necessary?"

"The plainer the table, the more dangerous and unstable it's likely to be, Lalonde. I considered a prison cell but I figured you were a risk-taker who didn't mind eating at a table that wasn't behind bars."

"Yet a table without chains would have been too risky?"

"Sure was."

"And your reasoning with changing the chairs...?"

"I upgraded them and made sure there were enough to handle the table."

"Dave, I never asked you to do any of this. I certainly never wished for it."

"But Rose, you did ask. Neat 'n' tidy base of operations, right? I figured I'd--"

"I can _see_ what you figured you'd do. Oh, no," Rose said with a sigh, having just dipped her head in past the doorway to spot the kitchen. Her shoulders slumped, and it was beyond Dave as to how she could find any of his numerous improvements anything less than utterly efficient and practical. He followed her in, and began hovering again as he oriented himself horizontally. He crossed his arms under his chin as he did so, to imply casual serenity, and made especially sure to keep a calm face for Rose.

"Did you invert the stove's colors?"

"I prefer the term 'reimagined.'"

At this point Rose's hand reintroduced itself to her forehead, but the embrace was much gentler this time, as neither partner was in the mood for anything particularly sudden right now. They had both matured greatly since their last encounter. "Why is there is an extra knob on it? ...Do I even want to know?"

"Don't see why you wouldn't. All it does is change which oven interior it's connected to."

Rose did not have a response to this, and so she failed to respond.

"Here, I'll show you." With a flick of the wrist, Dave spun the dial, and the oven's interior flashed between a bogglingly great number of states, lit and unlit, filled with actively baking foods and not filled with actively baking foods, until it came to an ultimate halt on a scene where a circular pan filled with yellowish batter sat on a single slightly-below-the-middle rack. "Oh shit, look at that," Dave said eagerly, "that is some motherfuckin' cheesecake. Little plain, looks like, but I'm sure you can ice it however you want."

At this point, Rose found her voice, and decided to use it. "You've created an oven that can steal from other ovens. How is this in any way useful?" Dave frowned in confusion, and gestured towards the cheesecake with both hands. Rose solemnly shook her head, and looked around. "What else have you changed in here?"

"Oof, let's see... the counters are classier -- you could probably tell; there is thrice as much space under the sink as there was when I got here; it's also capable of dispensing processed apples and aiding most satanic rituals; microwave's mute and forever will be, you can thank me later; fridge is slightly bigger inside; oh, I also slapped a few buttons on the microwave so it can act like a calculator, y'know, to make good use of that number-pad; and... I think that's about it."

Rose had stopped listening sometime after hearing about the sink, because she knew nothing would be able to trump it, and instead manually inspected her kitchen appliances while Dave rambled on. The fridge, she found, would have had the most practical change in its additional interior space, if it had not been ruined by the fact that no reasonably horizontal surfaces existed anywhere inside. She could faintly make out the shapes of several foodstuffs the fridge had originally contained, all stuck in vertical corners scattered about a space she estimated to be about four hundred times greater than the previous interior of her fridge.

"Dave, is the kitchen the only room you have toyed with?" Rose asked, and was completely correct in believing she might already know the answer.

"Personally I'd say I haven't toyed with any of your rooms. But yes," he added when Rose began to scowl, "I have given nice additions to all of the rooms in your apartment. Just a few personally-recommended starter changes for us to work with."

A soft, resigned sigh escaped Rose, and she closed her eyes for a moment. They reopened, and bore directly into Dave. She spoke with newfound purpose, and a refined sense of how to deal with Dave's horseshit. "I think I've come to a decision regarding my home."

"Goody gumdrops," he said, surprisingly earnest. "What is it?"

"I would like to create a new one."

A short pause passed as Dave processed this, after which his face might as well have begun skydiving for how much it abruptly fell. "You want to entirely start over with designing and decorating a home? From scratch?"

"I don't see any way in which I could have meant anything else."

"...You don't even want me to clear all the furniture out of here so you can start fresh? Or take a look at everything I changed first, to see if maybe there's something you actually like? C'mon; I put a lot of thought into it."

"No; you've tainted this place." Disdain soaked Rose's words, and Dave could not recall a time in his life when he had ever felt more personally attacked. He staggered from his flight, and was forced to land on his feet, taking a few unsteady steps back as if shot. "Besides," she said with only a slightly less-offensive tone, "even if I _did_ trust you to remove every 'improvement' you've added, this is rented property. If I'm going to be improving my home, I might as well begin with properly owning one."

"...Alright," Dave said after some time, once he had steadied himself and realized that there were few words he could string together to sway Rose's opinion. "I can get behind that. Perfectly reasonable; I won't argue it. Just one question before we start, though."

"And that is?"

"Are you sure you don't want to start by wishing that stick out of your ass instead?"

"I am sure, Dave," Rose said dryly.

"Consider it," Dave told her pointedly. "Could work miracles for your mood, your bowels, and anyone within fifty feet of you at a given time."

Rose ignored this. "Nepeta," she called, and Nepeta immediately poked her head through the doorway, as if she had been waiting just behind it. "I hate to cut our time here short, as I really had planned on showing you around, but Dave has just proven to me firsthand how spectacularly incapable he is with interior design." Her voice had something of a lilt to it as she said this, much more pleasant than when she had been speaking with Dave. "Would you care to assist me in designing a new home? I'll even let you keep some rooms all to yourself, if you like."

"Oh, I already have a home," Nepeta said with a dismissive wave of her hand, but then, thinking on it, she added, "I wouldn't mind having some shared purr-operty, though. A place to visit, like a fur-iend's vacation home, would be great."

"Excellent," Rose said, smiling sweetly as Nepeta did the same. She turned back to Dave, and Nepeta ducked her head back out of the doorway. "Now, Dave, I can create a home in its own dimension, right?"

Dave frowned again, and he made a mental note to break that habit before it finished forming. "Well, not you per se," he said, to start with. "Not unless you have some hidden talent when it comes to making something out of nothing."

"You know what I meant; can you create a space where we can assemble my new home?"

Dave scratched his chin, as if in thought. "Yeah, I can." Distinctly, his voice held no enthusiasm or pride over the matter.

"Then I'd like for you to create a blank new dimension. Preferably, one with breathable oxygen, and perhaps something to stand on."

At this moment, Dave briskly rubbed his hands together, as though he was cold. It did not interrupt the flow of conversation. "I know how to create dimensions suitable for human life, Rose."

"That doesn't guarantee to me that you _will_ create such a dimension."

"I'm not allowed to kill mortals, Rose." Dave's voice was devoid of feeling, monotone and almost bored. His attention was on the palms of his hands, rather than Rose. He stared at them, both flat and facing him, and he rubbed them together again. "Not unless they specifically wish for it, and it's only themself. 'S in the rules."

"I'll... keep that in mind," Rose said, as she tried not to. She could explore magical suicide... never, hopefully. "Oh," Rose added suddenly, but with the urgency of someone who realized they had just dropped the pencil they were holding, while fully aware of the full pencil case in their other hand. "I need to wish for it, don't I?"

"I dunno, Rose, you tell me," said Dave, but it lacked the spark of snark it should have possessed. Rose opened her mouth to respond, but Dave cut her off. "No, don't actually; just let me finish this."

In Dave's hands was an assembly of small particles which could very easily have been dust swirling around, only it did so in a loosely spherical fashion between his palms. The particles seemed to multiply as they spun, slowly focusing and growing together to create an indistinct orb, glowing white and hovering between his hands. It seemed to grow once it finished forming, as if its contents had nowhere to go but generally outward, until it reached a set level of visual clarity and size intensity. It looked to be about the size of a billiard ball upon finishing.

"Okay," he said, and then gracelessly crushed the orb between his hands. A slight tremor rocked the room as white flecks exploded from his grip, before gradually disappearing in the air until none remained. "Done."

"So you've created the dimension now?"

"What?" asked Dave, and his voice had apparently rediscovered its usual jubilation. "No. I was just doing that to cheer myself up. Helped a little; I prefer takin' personal amusement from annoying humans to it, though."

Rose sighed, and it only occurred to her after doing so that she had just contributed to Dave's intended personal annoyment. "I don't know why I expected you to take the initiative. Dave, I wish for a new dimension to construct my home in."

"Yeah, yeah; I got that." Dave snapped his fingers, and beside them appeared a simple wooden door, painted white and sporting a plain brass doorknob. "You can change that by the way," he said, pointing at the door. "That's just the default look; doesn't have to be that color or design. Doesn't even have to be a door, if you want like a manhole or rope ladder instead."

"A door will do just fine, thank you. Now, if I go inside, what exactly will happen?"

"You'll be in your new dimension, and literally nothing but oxygen will be in there around you. Physical environment so rich in oxygen it's abolished all the lower classes entirely -- and, for your special mortal needs, I even calibrated the pressure so you don't die from oxygen poisoning."

"So I'll just begin falling, in oxygen, as soon as I walk in?"

Dave gave Rose a bemused look. "No, you'll walk in at the bottom of the dimension."

Rose took the look Dave gave her, and regifted it back. "Dimensions have bottoms?"

" _No,_ Rose, they go on _forever_ and loop infinitely. Of course they fucking have bottoms; how the hell do you think pocket dimensions work?"

"Admittedly, I have gone through no curriculum that would enlighten me as to their nature. So what is at the bottom, then?"

"Nothing."

"If there's nothing there, then how is there a bottom?"

"It's a really condensed nothing."

Rose did not look ready to accept this, nor was she, but she decided not to press the matter. "Just so long as I can enter it safely."

"Absolutely," said Dave. He pulled on the doorknob, and it revolved along unseen hinges. Where the door was originally, an opening that matched the door's dimensions remained, leading to a completely, near-blindingly white space. "Well," he continued, as an afterthought, "so long as you don't touch the entrance's edges."

"What will happen if I touch the edges?"

Dave considered how to answer this. He knew perfectly well what the answer was, but sometimes being blunt just did not cut it. "Rose, you seem like you think you're an intelligent girl, for a human; what do _you_ think would happen if you touched the edge of a perfectly planar portal to a separate dimension?"

It occurred to Rose that she had no earthly idea what would happen, because she had never dealt with a perfectly planar portal to a separate dimension before. "If it's a safety concern, I can't say I believe it will be something good." Dave nodded, and motioned for Rose to continue. She shrugged. "Ultimately, I am unaware of precisely what that something will be, Dave."

"Alright, maybe you don't know enough geometry for this, but first, realize that this opening here," he gestured towards the white rectangular space, "is completely flat. It has no definitive length to it whatsoever; only height and width. On one side of the portal, the 'inside' for simplicity's sake, a space exists completely separate from the one you're standing in right now. Still with me?" Rose nodded, crossing her arms as she listened. "On the outside, it's pretty much the same; it's a separate space, and there's nothing except the air immediately surrounding it. It's all otherwise-empty space -- but it's two different otherwise-empty spaces, an opening to one contained within the other, and also vice versa, so that you can get back. Get it?"

"So, then," Rose said, trying to deduce the conclusion, "if something were to meet the edge between these two realities--"

"It's one reality; two dimensional spaces."

"Two _dimensional spaces_ , then, it would... exist in both spaces?"

Dave bobbed his head around, as if swishing a liquid around in his mouth vigorously enough to knock his skull back and forth. Slowly, he said, " _Basic_ -ally, yeah; you're not exactly wrong. The reason it's a safety concern is that the single object passing between two dimensions tends to get cleanly split along those dimensions' seams."

"Oh," said Rose, and grave understanding flashed on her face.

"Yeah," said Dave, nodding. "Of course, we genies fixed that problem a long time ago by adding a magical barrier a few micrometers around the edges, but back in the old days, you'd slice your fingers clean off trying to grab it like it was a doorway."

"What if you entered the portal from the other side? In this dimension, I mean." As Rose said this, she moved around the door and its portal, inspecting it from the back. A hazy rectangular film existed in the air, showing Dave on the other side, still standing where he was in the kitchen. Everything was slightly greyer through the shape, just significantly enough to notice without intense focus.

"Eh, simply put you'd fall apart at the atomic level as you passed through." This immediately dissuaded Rose from approaching the backside, and she promptly returned to the front. "Everything would come out the other side just fine, but nothing would be connected to anything else anymore. Essentially, you'd be vaporized into your components, and not even flesh and blood either; just carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and all the tiny fractions of other shit that's in you."

"And has that also been fixed?"

"Only as much as with the seams. That would still happen if you touched the back; but, since there's a magical fuckin' barrier there too, that's also pretty difficult to let happen."

"Good to know," Rose breathed.

"So, ready to step inside?" Dave gestured elegantly towards the open door.

"Will it all be white on the other side?"

"Why the hell wouldn't it be?"

"Well, you said it was nothing but oxygen and, well, nothingness. If anything, amid the transparent oxygen, I would imagine nothingness to be a spectacularly black void."

"That's because your imagination sucks." Rose frowned, but Dave continued before she could retort. "It's also because there isn't very much condensed nothing in your dimension of origin, so I won't blame your uneducated ass for not knowing what it looks like; but as you can see right through there, when it's condensed enough it's totally white. Now, I'm gonna reiterate: ready to step inside?"

Very mildly hesitant, Rose turned to call for Nepeta, but found her standing just to her side, smiling pleasantly once spotted. It was enough of a consolation to inspire Rose not to delay the inevitable. "I'm ready, I suppose."

"Then let's go."

The three entered, Dave leading the way, and the door politely shut itself behind them.


	7. Condensed Nothingness

Three days, or more accurately sixty seven hours, twenty two minutes, and about forty nine seconds, passed by before Rose was officially satisfied with everything that her new home had come to include.

Given that Rose had already removed any personal need to eat or sleep, the hours passed by mostly without rest as she and Dave worked more-or-less together to construct a complex that appealed primarily to Rose, not Dave, with a secondary focus on Nepeta's aesthetic preferences.

It had been a slow process getting it all started, not because Dave was inept at building so much as Rose had never studied subjects related to construction, carpentry, or structural integrity, but after a few practice runs with telling Dave what to build and how, all of which having wound up in spectacular heaps of rubble, the building process went along pretty much unabated.

The reason it was 'pretty much' unabated rather than 'totally' was due to Dave still being a genie, which meant he would sporadically do something annoying to everyone but himself, for nothing more than his own amusement.

Most of his antics, however, wound up teaching Rose something about precisely what he could build, and thus how she could incorporate a new traditional physics-defying feature into some part or another of her growing building. Without Dave's sense of humor, Rose might never have requested a room which lacked gravity -- for flight practice, of course, and absolutely nothing more childish or lighthearted than that -- or a door which, instead of leading to a room directly behind it, led to a sub-dimension that was extensively modeled to resemble a pleasant garden area which looped on itself indefinitely. It required a fair number of well-placed hedges to prevent anyone from seeing their own body an infinite number of times in the distance, but the end result was rather enjoyable to take a casual stroll through.

At one point, Rose discovered that just as much as pocket dimensions apparently have bottoms, they also have sides and tops. Her new home's dimension was, according to Dave, 125,000,000 cubic meters in volume, and given that her dimension was, also according to Dave, constructed in the shape of a cube, that meant each side had 500 meters for her to make use of.

Ultimately, after quite the extensive amount of pottering about and moving sections of her home from one area to another, sometimes in ways that should not have been physically possible, the finished product that was Rose's home took up less than twenty meters on each side. It was a rather boxy structure and, in fact, a perfectly white, perfectly smooth, perfectly cubic box, made out of whatever it was that Dave used to make perfectly white, perfectly smooth, perfectly cubic structures.

Its only blemish was a single difficult-to-spot doorknob, white and smooth and altogether as bland as the rest of the box, which led to the painstakingly-detailed interior. The door this doorknob connected to was similarly difficult to find, as it displayed no cracks or crevices which might separate it from the walls around it, but with close inspection and enough groping it was clear that a small doorknob had been stuck on the box, which could be turned to open the front door and allow access to the inside.

Dave had never asked, but Rose had come to regale him with the fact that it was something of a metaphor she was personally fond of, with how the house looked utterly plain on the outside, if not impenetrable and damn-near impossible to get inside without knowing how, but untold mysteries were waiting just past a single, simple entrance, all of them bigger and more exciting than their confinement's exterior should have allowed and ready for anyone to walk along and take them in at their leisure.

"Yeah, it's real nice, Lalonde," Dave said absentmindedly when Rose had finished telling him about it. His thoughts were distracted by whether this building needed some rocks, or dirt, or _something_  around it. Aside from the garden, Rose had thusfar refused to ask for any form of landscaping or outdoors work, and the creative soul in Dave despised how boring this blank 'outside' area was. The whole point of an empty canvas is to give it some color, he mentally mused, not to leave it exactly the fucking way you found it.

"You mind if I add a sky?" Dave asked aloud, slightly more focused.

"A... sky?" Rose tried to locate the connection between her metaphor and skies, and failed.

"You know, that blue thing that sits really far above you, and in it there's this glowing yellowish-white orb that--"

"I know what a sky is, Dave," Rose said curtly. "Why do you want to add one here?"

"Because all you've got out here right now is a box that's the exact same shade of white as everything around it. In short, it's blank, and that's fucking boring."

"Dave, it's supposed to be blank out here, that's--"

"Completely unoriginal and unabashedly stupid?"

Rose frowned, but fought the urge to sigh, and succeeded in staving it off. All part of a progressive effort to be less externally-bothered by Dave. "I would have said 'the metaphor,' but I suppose you find those unappealing in physical media."

"Are you shitting me right now?" The words nearly exploded out of Dave's mouth, and managed to catch Rose off-guard. "Wow," he continued, a scowl just noticeable with his sunglasses, "you know, I'll be honest: I did not think humans could be this full of themselves, but I am really glad to have met you, Rose; you've turned the world around me upside-down and shown me the goddamn light. No, you self-absorbed prick, I don't 'find those unappealing in physical media;' you're just not nearly as slick as you think you are for putting a big white box in a bigger white box."

Rose tried to cut in at this time for a retort, but Dave would not be deterred in his rant, and gave her no opportunity between the speed or volume of his words. "I hadn't figured you for one of those hoity-toity artsy-fartsy types that thought it was absolutely ingenious to put a dot and a line on a piece of paper and call it a thought-provoking masterpiece, but go figure that you are. I also had  _hoped_ you _weren't_ closed off to the real world so much that you actually thought you are the only person who bottles up who they are on the inside and rarely brings it to the light of fuckin' day outside, but guess what princess?" Dave held up an airhorn, and pressed its top before Rose could cover her ears.  " _You aren't,_ " he said while the noise blared, speaking over it without any effort.

He discarded the horn, and continued speaking still. "You see this?" Dave asked, abruptly flying up and over to the box, gesturing broadly towards it. "No, seriously; do you _see_ this? _Can_ you? It's white-on-fucking-white; of course you can't fucking see it! Your shitty attempt at a visual metaphor is bad enough in that you had me make the outside look like a fucking piss-poor exploratory endeavor into monochromatic sculptures, but it's not even a metaphor for the conceited assholes like yourself who  _would_ see it as one, because they  _can't fucking see it!_ There is no single defining light source out here, which means there are no shadows, which means this is an incredibly-fucking-awful visual- _anything_! The fact that you're _still_ so goddamned proud of yourself for coming up with it just makes you an even bigger asshole, and trust me when I say that should mean something coming from me, because I know all there is to know about being an asshole, and you're right on the fucking money with this shit!"

Taking a deep, calming breath, never mind that it was an entirely cosmetic function of his, Dave floated back down to land in front of Rose. "If you want to tell yourself that it's clever to plonk this piece a' work down in the middle of a white empty field, then okay, be my fucking guest and self-opinionate to your miserably short-lived heart's content. But keep it to yourself, and don't imply, insinuate, or even  _think_ that in all your laughably small years of life, you know something that I don't, let alone about art or metaphors. You wanna know something? I was alive during the Renaissance, and even if I _hadn't_ experienced firsthand a significant historical point in time when you humans proved that you actually _did_  know how to produce art, I would _still_ be able to look at your box and understand that this, this here, is complete bullshit. Excuse me," he said, finishing off his rant significantly quieter than it had been at its crescendo, just below his average speaking volume, and snapped open a door at his side that had not been there previously. Neither Rose nor Nepeta had any time to even register what the door looked like, let alone what was faintly visible behind it, before Dave walked 'inside' and closed it behind him, whereupon it immediately vanished with a soft pop.

A melancholy silence was shared between Rose and Nepeta in Dave's wake, and neither seemed willing to break it, as if all the more fragile after the brash and loud sounds that had brutally preceded it. Slowly, they shuffled towards and entered their boxy home without a word, Rose first and Nepeta trailing not far behind, and as they settled in it would thus be an appropriate time to shift focus and describe the abode's expansive interior.

The main area, which they entered into, was undoubtedly the largest part of the first floor, in fact much wider than the building visible from outside. A short but lush purple carpet covered the majority of its floor, with a small tiled square bearing a doormat at the entrance. All the walls were a light grey, and off against one such wall, a two-steps-lowered area with polished hardwood flooring held a seating arrangement and neat array of electronic entertainment devices. Specifically, a sizable orange couch (colored at Nepeta's behest) which ran from end to end of the lowered flooring, as comfortable and cushy as Dave could make it without allowing more than half a foot of sinking in. It faced a sleek technologically-gifted display, featuring not only a television screen that tried valiantly to dwarf the wall behind it, but also a respectable sound system that ran around everything without any pesky wires. (Rose had been especially sure to ask for that, and felt much more liberated knowing that it would be impossible to trip over stray cords.)

Very few furnishings occupied this large open room, but among those on the carpet were utterly garish metal and glass 'decorations,' if one would be so mad as to name them such, that Dave had designed at Rose's request when she wanted to see what he could do. She could find no practical use for anything he had made, and so every single piece Dave created perfectly fulfilled Rose's requirements for keeping them. Her favorite was the one that looked prominently blobby at the bottom, illustriously spiky at the top, and mostly lacked a middle save for a few errant pieces that hung in the air, torn between aligning with either spikes or blobs until they had resorted to becoming their own sect of various obsidian prisms.

Without a wall or doorway to separate the two, the main area spilled into a kitchen just beyond the entertainment area, and it proved intentional as vibrant carpeting and smooth rubbery tile mixed slightly in the middle, swirling oddly before giving way to one or the other on their respective sides. The kitchen was small, but given that it was mostly for decoration and, at best, a simple hobby of culinary effect, it hardly needed much space. An island counter sat in the middle, looking somewhat sullen over how depressingly thin it was at perhaps a half meter long and some two or so meters wide. Its surface was a milky marble, no hard edges to speak of, sitting on a curved dark wooden paneling that looked more suited to being broken into kindling than supporting any weight whatsoever. Accompanying the counter were three stools, each sprouting from the ground like a majestic tree, or more of a stunted mushroom given their shape, silvery along their trunk and a matte black on the seat.

Past all that, a slightly thicker but otherwise identical countering slunk against the wall, holding all manner of baking and food-preparation instruments. In reality, as per Dave's magic, it actually held nothing whatsoever -- not until someone wanted to use an appliance, at which point it would appear before them. It had been tricky for Rose to word it to Dave in a way that would prevent any individual appliances from popping in within one another, or disappearing with ingredients still inside, but after enough time she had worked out all the immediate issues. Again, they would hardly be used unless Rose spontaneously felt the need to cook food rather than wish for it, but in the end she could chalk the time spent on it up to improving her manipulation and understanding of magical semantics.

No refrigerator, stove, or sink occupied the kitchen, as all were involved in the 'convenience' of the counter's enchantment, and this made the kitchen look altogether barren and starved. Luckily, the island counter doubled as a bar, and various bottles of differing alcoholic content were cleverly hidden in impossible crevices on the rear of the counter -- impossible because while the bottles should have poked out the other side of the counter's base, they did not, and instead resided comfortably in their individual cubbyholes. Finally, a single tall mirror hung on the wall directly facing the island counter, but its significance shall be built upon later.

Off to the side, at the far end of the main living area and past all the atrocious sculptures, a spiral staircase shimmered in invisible light. That is, invisible until it struck the prismatic glass steps, at which point the light sparkled and shone and what have you, radiant and just shy of blinding, so long as you did not look directly at it. Rose had no excuse for it; she just wanted a pretty shimmering glass staircase.

It led upwards to a long narrow hall, which had multiple doors of various designs all leading off to a variety of rooms, each of which becoming more and more esoteric as the doors went on. Nearest to the staircase was Rose's bedroom, Nepeta's bedroom, a bathroom, and a small closet(read: Dave's bedroom); further out was a play room for Rose's cat(which, while not specifically built for her, Nepeta was also welcome to play in in both human and feline forms), the aforementioned zero-gravity room, an artificial jungle which Rose had not yet asked Dave to stock with live animals, but which Nepeta would hunt in in her spare time if animals ever came to populate it, and a room which closely resembled the inside of a log cabin, ready for the winter times even as they never strictly occurred in this dimension.

Rose's bedroom in particular was, for the most part, totally empty; it had proved difficult for her to decorate a room dedicated by name to an object she no longer physically needed. As personal compensation, because sleep had been rather enjoyable as she remembered it last, Rose wished for the ability to sleep, but still without ever requiring it. It was the only logical conclusion, as she could do the same with eating.

Anyhow, back to her bedroom: it contained one king-sized bed bearing swirls of darkened purple in sheets and blankets, plus two dark puffy pillows, as if the bed itself was tired and each pillow sat just below an eye. All of it sat on a carpet blacker than the void of space, surrounded by flat walls and a ceiling of the same color, and not much else. All that really stood out in the impossibly dark room was the door, an out-of-place pale beige rectangle which featured a gold doorknob shaped like an overturned and slightly elongated 's'. The door was clearly wooden with the faint and lengthy waves flowing through it, but beyond that the physical shape of the door seemed to twist, as if subtly moving whenever viewed from the corner of one's eye and perfectly still when seen head-on.

Nepeta's room, although nearly as utilitarian as Rose's, was much more colorful -- never mind the buckets of paint sitting on the floor. A sort of artistic abstraction had infested much of the room, and while a simple cot hung plainly from two poles done up to resemble tree trunks in the room's center, sitting above a pristine flooring which resembled a forest floor, the walls and ceiling were absolutely covered with vibrant hues and bright-but-simple colors, all paradoxically clashing and blending in a stunning chaotic harmony. What made this room especially special was that it could be cleared to a plain white with the press of a button, located on the frame of the equally-paintable and equally-painted door, at which point the buckets of paint could be used to redecorate them however desired.

More unique to the room was the property of the floor and the paint buckets, the former being that it absorbed and eradicated any paint that came in contact with it, the latter being that they automatically refilled with their individual designated colors. Even the paint itself was magical, in that it would dry instantly upon striking a suitable surface, to prevent any unintentional mixing and produce crisper colors. Nepeta had surprised Rose in asking for all of this, but apparently she enjoyed fingerpainting as a hobby, and saw no reason not to request a room dedicated to it.

The general-purpose closet near the two bedrooms was, by contrast, extraordinarily plain, with a plain brown door leading to a plain brown carpet sitting under a loathsomely square, plain brownish room, accented by a single dangling light with a string. It held nothing inside, but had been carefully constructed so as to fit, volumetrically, exactly three Daves, at a height that would allow a single Dave inside to stand almost, but not quite, entirely uncomfortably. He did not plan on using it, but Rose had requested Dave build it anyway, for what he could only surmise was the classic 'shits and giggles' reasoning package.

Because none of the other rooms upstairs require further exposition, and possess no immediate relevance, they shall not be described in additional detail at this time; further, the party of two downstairs were finally daring to break the silence.

"Does Dave blow up like this often?" Rose asked, after the two of them had settled at the stools in the kitchen. Both had picked their poison from the counter's stock and then poured it into a small glass from which they would take smaller sips, but neither had said a word until just now.

"No," said Nepeta distractedly, warily eying her drink as though it might lunge for her throat if she looked away. "Not that I know of, anyway. He just tends to get hung up on the small things." Carefully, she took a sip from the glass, and scrunched up her face upon rediscovering that Absinthe tasted much worse than it looked. Still, that taste was better than a number of tastes she had experienced in the past, and she took another swig for the hell of it.

"Untrue!" Dave's voice rang out, despite Dave himself not being visibly present. "I just have a really low opinion of people who're full of themselves, and sometimes I express that opinion really loudly. I humbly apologize if that expressal of opinion startled either of you."

Rose harrumphed, honing in on Dave's first statement. "Bold words from the one who purposely soiled the majority of my apartment in the name of their bizarre aesthetic ideals," she called out, directing her voice nowhere in particular while Dave remained hidden.

"Bolder still," Dave replied, "from the one who didn't even take a look at half of what I changed before giving up on all of it entirely." With a puff of acrid smoke, Dave appeared, leaning against the wall near the mirror. He had replaced his construction outfit with his black suit, and now his hair was slicked down. "Rose, I know this might be difficult for you to properly grasp as a prideful little human, but it's _okay_ to be wrong."

"I was not aware it was possible to be right or wrong with a personal preference for visual appearances."

"Then you're just as ignorant as you look." Dave put a hand to the side of his mouth to conspicuously whisper, "You look incredibly fuckin' ignorant, by the way."

"Yes, I gathered that was your opinion of me; are you implying that my preferences are wrong, then, and yours right?"

Dave wagged a finger scoldingly. "Not at all, and I'm insulted you think I'd be that self-righteous. You're not going to rub off on me that easily." He pushed off from the wall, and seated himself at the only unoccupied stool in the kitchen. Because everyone else had a drink, he produced one for himself, this one sporting a murky grey color. He took a pull from it, shook his head once, and then turned toward Rose. "Rose, you hafta understand: the heart of the issue here is that the outside of this box of yours is the most pointless visual representation of anything to ever exist _ever_ , and that alone is capable of ruining all of your stupendous ideas about how you're much more complex on the inside than the outside."

"And you believe a sky would fix the issue?"

"No, I believe a sky'd be a good fuckin' start, because something is better than nothing. Again, it's just white on top a' white out there; even some bleached goddamn sand would've been a preferable backdrop to having literally nothing behind your stupid box. You'd still have to strain your eyes to see the box, but at least then you could _see_ it."

Rose gave into the rising urge to sigh, and gulped down her drink to stifle it. "Would it sate you, then," she asked while refilling her glass, "if I let you add your sky, and whatever environment you think would best complement a white box with a sky above it?"

Dave rubbed his chin for a moment, considering this. "No," he concluded with an endearing smile.

By this point, exasperation had come for a visit, and it made itself nicely at home in Rose's voice. "And why not?"

"Because you're trying to fix my opinion more than you're trying to fix the box, which means you haven't learned a goddamn thing."

Rose carefully rested her head on the palm of her left hand, which was in turn resting on the countertop by way of connected elbow. "Why does this matter so much to you, anyway? What difference does it make to you if I have a white box sitting in a blank dimension, versus not?"

"It matters because I," Dave gestured towards himself with flare, "have principles, like any self-respecting asshole would, and I stick to them. It makes a difference because when you tell me how proud you are of your box, it makes you a bigger asshole than me if the box is nigh-impossible to see."

"Okay, then," Rose said simply.

"Okay," Dave agreed.

Nepeta looked between the two of them, and was unsure how they had come to any sort of conclusion, but dared not ask in case it launched them back into arguing.

Dave downed his grey drink, while Rose drank hers, and once finished they stood up in unison as if putting on a play. They left the kitchen, Rose first in a quick but calm stride and Dave hovering steadily after, until they reached the front door. Nepeta scrambled to keep up, not aware of her part if she had one in this rehearsal, and certainly not wanting to miss whatever it was that was about to unfold.

All three exited, and some ten or so meters away from the open door, Rose turned around, looking at her box with a determined look. She looked above it, squinting at the nothingness, and did the same for all the nothing underfoot. After some time, she sighed, nodded, and said to Dave, "What time is it right now outside this dimension?"

"Rose, 'outside this dimension' is not nearly as concise as you think it is; complete fuckin' opposite, in fact."

"What time is it in the dimension we were in directly before entering this one?" she corrected.

Dave looked at a fancy silver watch on his wrist, displaying symbols and moving parts that matched neither digital or analog watches of traditional earth design. "What time do you want it to be?" he asked airily in conclusion.

"Noon," Rose decided arbitrarily, to avoid asking why.

"Noon it is."

"Good; now, add your sky, and sync it up with that time."

"Yeah, I see what you're going for; I'll just take the extensively-complicated liberty of making sure time passes in this dimension just the way it does in the one we came from, too. Wouldn't want you complaining about why the sky never moves when you're in here."

Rose said nothing, and motioned for Dave continue; he did, and went through all the processes necessary to ensure that time passed in here at the same rate as out there; to prevent any catastrophic or lethal time-stopping events in either dimension, let alone between them; to create the general simulation of the sky in this dimension that he knew Rose wanted to resemble the one in that dimension; to allow the sun and moon of this dimension to move around their respective surfaces that were otherwise absolutely nothing, without burning or freezing anything, among other unintended effects; and so on. In other words, Dave used magic, and in an instant, it was done.

All the nothing suddenly became a vibrant blue, and it would not have been inaccurate to describe it as 'sky blue,' only a tad clichéd. Even the floor was blue now, and it made Rose feel as though she was falling, if for a moment. A spotty grey orb was below them, which looked suspiciously like a moon Rose had seen many times before in her life, and above them hung an orb of similar size but of much greater brightness, familiar in all but its ability to blind, which it apparently lacked.

The orbs, if one stood still, looked as though they were merely painted on the floor, but enough movement would break the illusion, revealing them to be a sort of inverted projection, both apparently very far outside of the walls of nothing binding this dimension.

"Excellent. Now put in some grass."

Grass suddenly sprouted up beneath Rose's feet, but it was distinctly blue between the individual blades.

"With dirt underneath," Rose added, and although she did not know it, she was suddenly lifted several meters into the air to accommodate all the dirt that was suddenly put beneath her and the grass. Her box did the same, as did Nepeta and Dave, and all of it rested on the neatly packed earth.

Rose hummed quietly to herself, and inspected the dirt, focusing on its edges. It very clearly stopped at the boundaries of the dimension, where the sky replaced it, as though she could fall off this square chunk of earth at any time.

"However you designed the sky, can you do that with this dirt and grass, too? Enough to create a horizon, perhaps with some hills here or there."

The world around Rose obliged, and dirt and grass sprung outwards in all directions, gently curving up and down and creating a grassy landscape that appeared to go on for miles.

"How about some wind, while you're at it? Nothing too harsh, either; just enough to comb through the fields."

A slight breeze swept past Rose's skin, and did the same with the grass, pulling it all in one direction, and creating soft waves as the grass would blow, rebound, and be blown again. Tranquility itself seemed to bound gaily around the scene, and Rose considered adding flowers, but decided that grassy hills were enough for the time being.

"Thank you, Dave, that will be all; and how about it? Is this enough to make the box metaphor work for you?"

The genie floating in the air surveyed his surroundings, silently admiring his own handiwork, and shrugged. "I was actually kinda growing fond of the bleached sand idea. A dry desert'd look nice around a white shape, I think. But whatever, grass is nice too; your box has visible depth now, and that's good enough."

"I'm glad you agree. Nepeta?" Rose prodded, seeking her input.

"It's kinda short," she said sullenly, kicking a foot at the grass. "Not nearly tall enough to stalk anything in."

"My goodness, you're right," Rose said, holding a hand to her mouth in a mock gasp. "Dave, elongate the grass to suitable stalking height immediately."

It required a slightly different type of grass, but Dave obliged, and the short tendrils of green all around them steadily grew to just under a third of a meter in length. "Good enough?" he asked, adjusting his sunglasses.

Nepeta wiggled her hand, fingers outstretched and palm flat, as if measuring the grass' height from a short distance above it. "Eh, good enough."

"And you have no other qualms about my box or how I've had you design it, Dave?" Rose asked. Dave shook his head. "Then," Rose said eagerly, "my home and its dimension are officially complete. Let's celebrate with some tea." This final statement drew Dave's attention much less than Nepeta's, but he was willing to join in regardless of the fact that Rose would be asking him to brew it.

One by one, they filed into the box, Dave holding up the rear and closing the door behind them. And one by one, they walked through the living area and kitchen, and entered the mirror.


	8. Black Suit

"Excuse me," Dave had said quietly, sounding nearly remorseful, before stepping through and closing an odd grey door. It was the sort of door that seemed to not actually be there unless you already knew for certain that it was, and were staring straight at it. This was entirely intentional, as it prevented people from easily remembering such a door whenever they saw it open and close in the span of about a second.

On the other side of the door, which disappeared from both ends as soon as he closed it, Dave could be found in a spacious lobby, elegantly decorated with such a flurry of colors and materials that it appeared as though ten different people had tried to build it simultaneously, all without any sense of unity or planning. This was because it had been built by eleven people; of the eleven, however, only one had been assigned to ensuring that everything was sufficiently symmetrical, and he had had a hell of a time keeping up.

The lobby was far from immediately recognizable as possessing any level of symmetry, but the worker had masterfully proven in magical court that, from the right angle, using a special form of previously entirely-theoretical symmetry, the lobby was in fact perfectly symmetrical. The charges against him had thus been dropped, never mind the fact that he was a genie, and that genies were notorious for being virtually untouchable in any magical court of law, ensuring as much before they ever had to set foot in one; regardless, the case had still been a productive one, because magical courts of law often processed trials that made for spectacular entertainment, all the more so when genies were involved.

Dave did not plan on attending any magical courts today, but he did plan on paying a visit to a certain magical publisher, and set off immediately to find him. With a bounce in his step, Dave shed his construction outfit, letting it fall to dispersing ribbons as it revealed a sleek black suit underneath. He chucked his helmet off to some far corner of the lobby, where it neatly dissolved into a strong apple scent, and ran a hand along the top of his head. His hair smoothed out under the touch, and attained a sort of gloss that gave it the appearance of molded plastic. Not his best or most preferred style, not by a long shot, but sufficient for his purposes here today.

With confidence, Dave strode up to one of three or so reception desks, depending on whether that odd chunk of granite off to the side was a desk or a decoration, and lightly smacked the top of the bell; only once at first, but after a pause he pressed it several more times. The bell made a dull clink each time, not ringing in the slightest, but a receptionist still quickly appeared to snatch the bell away from Dave's hand.

It was not a flashy appearance; she literally became visible behind the desk where she previously was not, and displayed no enthusiasm for it, not even as she cradled the bell to her chest, out of Dave's reach. Even her physical appearance itself was not especially outstanding, with short ginger hair curling around her face, a pale complexion gently keeping hushed blue eyes in check behind a pair of glasses. Her outfit was professional, but plain, with a simple white blouse trailing down to a black skirt, where her image ended behind the desk. She did not look especially happy to be here, nor did she show any favorable disposition towards Dave, but there seemed to be a small disconnect there with Dave's reaction.

"Hey," Dave said with a wink and a smile, both of which were utterly pointless for different reasons.

"Appointment?" the receptionist asked dully, peering over her thin-framed glasses at Dave.

"Yes 'n' no," Dave replied, casually resting an arm on the desk. The receptionist drew back a step in reply, still keeping the bell away from him, but he hardly seemed to notice. "'M here for another talk with the big man, but this one's a little more serious than most." The receptionist stared on, unimpressed, and gave no indication that what Dave said actually meant anything to her. "You can tell, can't you? I'm wearing my suit today. And I know, I know, 'why isn't it red? Red's your favorite color!' but sometimes red's just not formal enough. No idea why, if I'll be honest, but it just isn't." The receptionist did not relent in her apathy, and Dave switched focus. "You remember the big man, don't you? You know, dude with the hat, sometimes a bitchin' pipe, played an instrumental role in printing that whole magical rule book deal, also has a thing for cakes I think? You _gotta_ remember a charming member of magical society like that, even in a big building like this."

The receptionist sighed, and normally it would have been her duty to stand there silently as security came by after she pressed the button under the desk -- unfortunately for this routine, however, Dave was a regular, and had become a regular for the sole purpose of never having to make an appointment. Regular trespassers could still have security called on them, but Dave was, loathsomely, not trespassing, and could not have the button pressed on him.

"Why do you always ring my bell if you never schedule anything?" the receptionist asked in a mostly bored, vaguely annoyed tone.

"Formality, mostly, but also to see that beautiful smile of yours." Dave winked again, still pointless given his sunglasses, and stood up from the counter. The receptionist was not smiling, and it had been a small while since she last had smiled, never mind the fact that Dave had not been around when it happened, but this did not seem to deter him in the slightest. "Keep up the good work, Janet," he called while walking away, headed towards a simple brown door just past the receptionist's desk.

"There's still no 't' in my name, Dave," she said quietly, but Dave was already gone by the time she finished saying it. Gingerly, she replaced the bell, expertly rung it once to prove that it still worked, and disappeared.

Dave's stride led him through several hallways and doors, and the designs of both were strikingly plain compared to the outrageous design of the lobby which led to it, mostly flat colors that repeated several times over. Every door he entered branched off to another hallway with even more doors down it, all in a space-bending spiderweb of winding paths and unmarked entrances that he navigated with ease.

Eventually, Dave came upon a door that was no different a shade of brown than those around it, and rapped sharply on it. He waited for a moment, then ducked when the door opened. As if on cue, a pie whizzed through the air where his head was previously, splattering on the wall behind Dave, at which point he entered.

"Hey hey," Dave said affably as he walked inside, "still got that classic pie trap, huh? Yeah," he said with a dying chuckle, "never gets old, and you have absolutely proved it. Pretty much indefinitely..."

In the room, which was done up to resemble a small office, a chair sat facing away from the short wooden desk it was behind. A lone white hat poked just over the top, providing the implication that someone was sitting in it, and possibly waiting to swivel around in it dramatically at some point. Nothing in the office was especially posh, but a gilded nameplate on the desk belied the ordinary decor of everything around it, never mind the out-of-place spring-loaded contraption that was drawing itself up into the ceiling. (It had already thrown its only pie; where else was it to go?)

"Still doing your brooding silence bit, I see," Dave observed. "Can't we skip the pleasantries today? Come on, from one genie to another, can't we just get down to business? It's actually _serious business_ this time, too, and I know you love that stuff."

No response came, but as if one had been given, Dave sighed, nodding to himself. "Alright, alright. I concede." Carefully, he cleared he throat, and held silent for a moment as he stared at the ground. "Excuse me, sir?" he said suddenly, almost timidly, looking up at the chair as if he only just noticed it. "Sir, I have some uh... a, er, report for you to... im-important documents, that..." his voice trailed off, expressing more emotion than his usual chipper tone. He sounded uncertain of himself, not scared, but close to worried. Hesitantly, and yet with the practiced steadiness of someone who had done this many times before, Dave reached a hand out to the chair, and slowly turned it to face him.

In the chair was a mannequin of sorts, vaguely humanoid, entirely white in color, and lacking all facial features except a prominent nose. The white hat sat atop its bald head, and it was dressed entirely in business attire, namely a strikingly clean white suit with a black tie. A pipe was affixed to the "mouth" of its face, hung carefully as though actually held by unseen lips, but despite its contents it was unlit.

Dave masterfully feigned shock at the sight. "S-sir?" he asked hollowly, taking a step back while looking aghast. Abruptly, he bent ninety degrees backwards, with the base of his spine being his pivot point, and no sooner had his head moved from its original position than had a stupendously thick hextuple-layered cake replaced it, flying through the air like a confectionery-based spear aimed true. It impacted the wall past him like a squishy trainwreck, splattering vanilla icing all over the wall, at which point a heavy, disappointed sigh vibrated through the air.

"Oh, Dave," admonished a gently harsh voice, deep and of male origin. "You never let me have my fun anymore."

"Yeah, I know," Dave said, shrugging casually from his half-horizontal position. "But after a while a guy gets tired of having a huge cake slammed into him every time he wants to talk with you."

"I suppose," the voice responded, dejected but understanding. Its owner casually stepped through the wall, which was actually just an illusion of a wall in that general area, and he bristled.

The man who bristled was rugged by appearance, a nearly imperceptible amount of stubble on his stone-solid chin, and he altogether resembled a handsome human male who had taken aging into his late forties rather well. Any point on his face could be described as either smooth, chiseled, handsome, or rugged, and if it was not one in any place then it was some combination of them. His was not an intimidating or hard image, but he was not producing a particularly intimidating or hard expression, and mostly appeared calm and relaxed, if a tad distant. His eyes were a shining blue, deep and light, with a small but noticeable twinkling quality to them. Like the mannequin, he had a black tie, but the rest of his attire fit more of a 'business casual' look, a white dress shirt being tucked into an unstyled pair of jeans, all ending at simple no-nonsense work shoes.

"Lookin' good as ever, J," Dave said, pointing both fingers at the man in a manner that suggested cool confidence, or tried to, at any rate. Steadily, like a crank, Dave pivoted his body back up until in a standing position again, at which point he put both hands in his pockets. "I actually met a guy with the same name as you not too long ago. Did _not_ live up to the name in the slightest; not even an ounce of mangrit to speak of."

'J' did not immediately respond, instead picking up the hat from the mannequin, and placing it on his short-haired head. It nearly obscured all of his dark brown hair, but a few stray tufts stubbornly poked out, unwilling to be so easily contained. He similarly retrieved his pipe, placing it between his lips without lighting it, at which point he turned to regard Dave with a warm smile. "Is that so?" he asked simply, his speech unimpeded by the pipe.

"Sure is," Dave said with an affirmative nod. "Granted, he was a human, and I doubt he had any magic to speak of, but I had to give him a chance to be sure."

"You tricked him into doing something foolish, didn't you?" The man's voice was nearly harsh, and he glared at Dave with an appraising eye.

"James," Dave said in mock offense, "I'm insulted you even have to ask."

The man, James, smiled broadly, and his stern expression vanished in a moment. "So what did you do to him, exactly?" he asked, eager for details.

"Ah, it was nothing fancy," Dave said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "I just offered him a hundred dollars to pull me out of my seat. Kid failed miserably -- convenient segue, though," he continued, interlocking his hands and pointing both index fingers at James, "what happened immediately afterwards was real interesting, and I'm here to talk to you about it. It was one of those moments where despite your best efforts, shit goes down like you would not believe, and I bet if your kid was here right now he'd agree without a second thought."

James raised a lone, well-trimmed eyebrow, but motioned for Dave to take a seat in the chair that had just appeared behind him.

"Oh, thanks," Dave muttered, crossing one leg over the other as he sat and worked himself into a comfortable position.

James, meanwhile, shook the mannequin out of the larger office chair, and took his seat in its place. He carefully rested his elbows on the desk, and gestured for Dave to continue.

"So," Dave said, taking but a moment to compile his words, "I doubt she was related to mangritless-samename James, but this girl walked up to me. I say girl, technically she was an adult woman by human age standards, but she's yet to really produce enough of a lasting impression on me in terms of 'refinedness' or 'elegance'; I would know, when I have such a handy reference as yourself."

James gave a small acknowledging smile at the compliment, but said nothing.

"Anyhow, the reason this is important is that she said, uh, to paraphrase, 'I've been looking for you and I want a wish.'"

"You specifically?" James asked.

"Nah; unfortunately my reputation was uninvolved, she was just looking for any old genie." James nodded, and lapsed back into silence. "Anyhow, she looked like fun, so I told her, 'sure, you get one wish.' Guess what she does with it?"

It took James a moment to realize Dave wanted an actual answer, and it came to him quickly. "Did she wish for infinite wishes?"

"She did!" Dave said enthusiastically, sounding on the verge of a laugh, yet more frustrated than humorous. "She fuckin' did. And that's part of why I'm here, as a sort of two-pronged agenda: firstly I think genies should have the right to retract wishes if a human makes that kinda wish. You know, a sort of protocol where it's immediately obvious that this human isn't gonna wish for anything good or reasonable, and so their wishes just drop to zero, maybe a negative number; _they_ owe _us_ their time if ever they make that stupid wish."

James smiled briefly at this, looking ready to chuckle, but quickly caught on that, past his exaggerative manner of speaking, Dave was being serious. "I'll consider it," he replied, "but you know how difficult it is to change the rules if they--"

"Uhp uhp uhp," Dave interrupted, raising a hand. "Not done. See it gets worse, because she immediately makes a second wish, and I think it's bullshittingly-safe to say that nobody ever wished it before -- and despite that, I'd bet you you're familiar with the concept of the given wish, too. I'd bet almost all genies are."

James frowned at this. "What makes you so certain?"

"She wished for a finite number of extra wishes."

James did not immediately react, but his expression slowly darkened, as though he had been shot some minutes ago and was only now taking notice of the excessive, life-threatening blood loss. He sat back in his chair, one hand gripping his chin as the other gripped the first arm's elbow, and he closed his eyes. "It was inevitable," he eventually conceded, and his voice seemed to become elderly, wizened but pained.

"Maybe," Dave said, shrugging. "Given recent events it sure looks like it. Ain't my place to say, though; someone finally did it, and while she's got her free ride going for her, what matters is that your book finally gets the widely bet-upon change everyone's been waiting for."

"Yes," James said, and paused, thinking. "Yes, I understand that. But you know that the change won't affect her as--"

"I know what it means." Dave was not angry, if anything just sullen; he had long since resigned himself to his current fate. "Rules and regulations go into effect in all their stable relative ways so that I can't just revoke her wishes or tell her to fuck off and actually see it happen; I get it. I'm still working on being the best worst goddamn genie I can be to get her to either use up her wishes or send me away -- and given that she's refused to let her wishes dip below increasingly higher and higher limits, it's the second one or fuckall."

"I'm sorry," James said honestly, earnestly.

"Hey, don't be," Dave told him simply. "I never expected to be the one that got the human who did it, but it's actually not the worst fun I've had in a while. And don't start telling me how you wish there was something you could do, either; all you can do, and all you need to do, is update the book."

James remained silent for a moment, but nodded. "Of course."

"Good," Dave said with a nod, at which point he checked his watch and stood. "All I needed to hear. That said, probably best that I get back to my cute little human asap, even if she is only in her own dimension."

"So soon?" James, despite himself, made no real verbal attempt to convince Dave to do otherwise. They had been friends long enough for him to know how stubborn Dave was.

"I'd love to get into a new prank war with you and-slash-or John, believe me, but I like to dole out my time in chunks, an' you know it. Sooner I can finish up my business with her in as few fell swoops as possible, the better. We can celebrate after, alright?" Dave stuck out a hand, and after a mere moment's contemplation, James stood up himself and shook it.

"Try not to give her too many extravagant ideas, Dave," James warned, holding Dave's hand firmly more than shaking it.

Dave produced a broad grin. "I'll do my damnedest not to."

The two shared a moment of silence, different thoughts culminating in their minds, at the end of which James released Dave's hand. "I'll be sure to push the book's update as soon as possible."

"You don't hafta tell me; I already know your work ethic and how spectacular of a shining example it is." Dave waved a goodbye salute. "Catch you 'round, Egbert."

"Actually, before you go," said James, giving pause to Dave as he turned to leave. "Will I see you at the next conference?"

Dave remained turned away from James for several moments, before turning his head back to casually mutter, "You might. Your only chance is if you're there, either way -- and I'm sure you already know just how much you're gonna be needed regardless. Important publisher business, right?"

The dodge of an answer was all James would get out of him, and he reluctantly accepted it without additional pursuit. "Right." Dave nodded, and left without another word, briefly repurposing the office door to take him directly back to Rose's dimension.

He likely would not have done that if James were not a friend, but given that he was, it was not as incredibly impolite to magically repurpose a door in his personal area as it would have been if Dave repurposed anyone else's door. Magical etiquette is a finicky subject, you know, and given the pie and cake that had already attempted to assault Dave, no matter how predictable they were, Dave was _at least_ entitled to a magical repurposing of a friend's door.

The door opened in Rose's living room, appearing in the middle of it and disappearing there too once Dave was through. Neither Rose nor Nepeta seemed to notice, and so he walked over to where they sat at the kitchen counter.

There, they continued not to notice him, because it was much easier to eavesdrop whilst invisible, and Dave was never one to pass up a good opportunity to listen in on conversations regarding himself. He leaned against the wall holding the kitchen mirror, just in time for Nepeta to speak.

"Not that I know of, anyway," said Nepeta. "He just tends to get hung up on the small things."

Dave smiled to himself. "Untrue!"


	9. Tea

Inside the mirror, or rather past it -- and not literally past it, mind you, not in the most basic of physical senses, as entering the mirror yielded passage to a subdimensional space rather than the solid wall behind it -- there existed a rather wide sitting room.

The room was certainly not as large as the living room some relative distance away, but it was a valid competitor, being fifteen meters in length on each side and four meters tall. In this room, muted colors lazily sprawled across all the available walls and pieces of furniture, of which there were many. Half of these furnishings were pieces which people normally sat upon; the other half were a variety of tables, or at the least objects which had flat surfaces at their top. Everything was arranged either together or apart from any other furnishing, in a distinct fashion of ordered chaos, and the room would have seemed cluttered if not for the generally unbroken boundaries of space around each assembly.

At one table in particular there sat a small silver platter, on which rested six porcelain tea cups. Around this table, five chairs sat facing it, and among them another, smaller and shorter table was trying to disguise itself as one of them. It was a valiant attempt, given that none of the chairs matched one another, but ultimately the table had been found out and had another platter, this one bearing a tall-yet-portly teapot, placed atop it.

It should come as no surprise that the larger of these two tables was where Nepeta and Rose sat, both seated directly next to one another at chairs opposite the second table. Dave, meanwhile, was standing behind the second table, occasionally glancing at the teapot, as if remembering that it existed every few moments, before slowly dismissing its existence until the next revelation.

Slowly, the teacups on the platter filled themselves with a light green, mostly transparent liquid, and once full the girls each took one, drinking their respective brews.

"Eugh; too bitter," Nepeta said immediately. The contents of her teacup briefly shook, becoming slightly lighter in color, at which point Nepeta took another sip. "Better," she admitted, smacking her lips.

"How much honey did you say you added the last time?" Rose asked, glancing up at Dave.

"Teaspoon."

"Mm... Give it another."

"Add some mint, too," added Nepeta. Dave sniffed in disdain, but the contents of their cups obeyed.

"Actually, what about peppermint, instead?" suggested Rose.

Dave frowned. "Rose, what do you actually even know about brewing tea with legitimate tea ingredients?"

This gave Rose a momentary pause. "Not much," she admitted, "but I figure it can't be too hard for you, as a magical being of nigh-limitless magical potential, to add the flavor of just about anything to my tea."

"Well," Dave conceded with a nod, "you're not wrong -- but you're also not on the fast-track for having a brew that's got any distinct fuckin' flavor to it. Same as the last three batches; you keep scramblin' this shit with so many different flavors in such cockamamie fucking amounts that it just goddamn muddles everything that's in it."

"Hm. I hadn't pinned you for a connoisseur of tea, of all things."

"I'm not, but I don't have to artfully enjoy this shit to know how to make it, let alone make it _right_."

"Why do you know how to make it, then?"

Dave frowned, hesitant to respond by only a fraction of a second. "You really don't know jack dick about how genies operate, do you?"

A shrug passed through Rose's shoulders. "I cannot say that I have spent enough time around you to understand _every_ aspect of, precisely, how to be a genie, no."

"Well, firstly, that's a relative argument," said Dave, "which means you're wrong, as you could feasibly learn fuckin' anything in any amount of time, given the concentration and dedicated focus. Like, y'know, how much attention you're paying, and how much effort you're actually putting into learning; but at any fuckin' learning rate, I will remind you that we already goddamn covered this back in the hot tub."

Nepeta frowned at the mention of the scene which, having never been a part of it, she still regarded with unabashed distaste. She said nothing, however, and retained focus on her tea.

"Remember the drink-making?" Dave continued. "The dress-tailoring? I had to fuckin' personally produce that shit, even if it was in the most esoteric of senses. Doesn't matter that I used magic to do it; I still had to know _how_ to create what I was making in order to make it correctly."

"How does that work, anyhow?" Rose asked, still considering her tea. "Also, could you make this hot? It's a bit lukewarm."

The tea unceremoniously began to steam, and Dave spoke as it did. "At its core, it works in the way that any magic works -- but of course, being a human, you don't have much of an education regarding this shit to draw from, do you?"

"I don't." Rose gently swirled her tea around in her cup, blew on it, and drank some, careful not to burn her tongue on the now-scalding liquid. "So, enlighten me, then. Explain to me how magic works, and don't be afraid to use the big words, either."

"See, you say that," said Dave, leaning to rest a hand on his table, "and I'm sure that you did fuckin' spectacularly with getting the most gold stars in elementary school, enough so to inspire your precious little belief that you can understand magic at the drop of a magically-accelerated hat; but even with a total disregard for how long it would take to explain anything useful to you, the fact of the matter is that you still don't know dick about magic theory as a whole. If I just start throwing in terms like 'magical flux' and 'sixth-dimensional physics,' you won't understand a goddamn word of what I'm saying."

Rose considered this for some time, still occasionally drinking from her tea. "What do you recommend, then?"

"What do I recommend in regards to what? Being a human? Making shitty metaphors? Knowing fuckall about making tea? Give me specifics, Rose."

"What do you recommend in terms of an education regarding all things magical?"

"Interesting question," Dave said, and considered it for all of two seconds. "I recommend being a magical being if you plan on getting one."

"And taking into account that, as you've said before, I cannot wish to change my species, let alone to that of a magical being?"

"Oof. Taking that into account..." Dave slowly tossed his head back, seeming to consider something on the ceiling, or past it. He briefly counted on his fingers, silently mouthing a few words, before concluding with a downward swoop of his head, "you're pretty much shit out of luck."

"Why?" Rose asked rather simply. "Is there a very human incapacity within me to prevent my understanding of magic at any significant level?"

"No," said Dave, "not exactly. The issue lies more in a kind of discrimination than some inherent disability -- although some magical peeps would consider it a fantastically depressing disability to be a human anyway. You know, with mortality, not having any magic, generally being pink and squishy and destructible, etcetera. Granted some humans actually _are_ magic, but that's where it gets back into discrimination, because who wants to sit next to a lousy smelly human in any magical university?"

"There are magical universities now?" Rose asked, raising an eyebrow.

"As they have been for some time, Rose; they're not a thing that only now began to exist because you just heard about them. Christ, are you even aware that there's an entire world outside of your own ass? I beseech you," Dave said elegantly, "to consider withdrawing your cranium from within your pompous rectum, so as to gain a new motherfuckin' perspective on life and everything else that's in it."

"Actually, that's another thing," said Rose, without so much as a hint of acknowledging Dave's last statement, "you say expletives such as 'Christ' and 'goddamn' quite an awful lot; are you religious? Is there, perhaps, actually a god, magical in his or her own nature or not?"

Dave blinked, momentarily lowered his sunglasses to gaze unimpeded at Rose, and blinked again. "Rose, that is a dangerous question, and I don't wanna answer it."

"Why not?" she asked, challenging Dave to comply.

"Because _genies_ sure as hell ain't supposed to exist according to human lore, yet you're asking one whether an even _larger_ dubiously-existent power is real." Dave shook his head.  "'S not within my power to tell you. But to succinctly answer your first question: no, I'm not religious. There just really isn't a word in your language that can convey precisely how goddamn aggravating humans are like the word 'goddamn' can. I mean hells, fucks, shits, damns and goddamns -- they're _all_ part of a good exaggerative vocabulary."

"Mm," Rose said in acknowledgement, offering a brief nod. "So regardless of whether there is a god, you cannot prove it?"

"Didn't say that," said Dave. "Just said I can't tell you."

"What if I were to wish for you to tell me?" Rose asked, before hiding a sly smile behind her teacup as she sipped from it.

"Wow," Dave responded immediately, not unaware of her smile in the slightest. "You are absolutely full of yourself, aren't you?" Dave shook his head. "I mean seriously; I thought living with my narcissistic ass all these years was bad enough -- but you? Honestly, it's impressive how spectacular a shining piece of shit you are despite your short life so far. Color me impressed."

Rose set her teacup down. "You didn't answer my--"

"The answer is 'the wish wouldn't go through.' I said I'm not allowed to tell you for a goddamned reason, Lalonde; it's one of the rules."

"Damn," she sighed in slight resignation. It was unfortunate, but there would be no definite proving or disproving of grand powers responsible for creating the universe today. "Back to magical educations, though," Rose continued, backtracking, "could I wish to be enrolled in a magical university?"

"You could," said Dave, shrugging. "People wouldn't like it, though; wouldn't like you for wishing or attending, wouldn't like me for granting the wish, wouldn't like the university if it actually provided an education for you, even though they're not technically allowed to refuse. Ultimately it'd create a lot of unnecessary unrest in the magical community -- moreso for wishing for it rather than going through the whole screening process."

"But aside from that process, what are my alternatives? I can't say I do _not_ want to learn about these forces of which I am largely uneducated, especially not while I have you in my charge."

"Fuck you for that, by the way. That is, the whole enslavement-by-wishing-for-wishes thing; not sure if I made that sentiment clear before." Idly, Dave picked up the teapot, examining it closely, before casually tossing it from hand to hand. "Hey, speaking of, why did you even wish for this? I don't need a teapot to make tea; this thing's useless."

Rose frowned, warily eying the teapot as it sailed through the air several times over. "It's hardly useless to those of us who cannot magically produce tea on a whim, Dave. That teapot is for the regrettably inevitable reality that one day, perhaps, you won't be around to obey my every command, and I might have to prepare tea all by myself."

Dave set the teapot back down. "You sound like you're trying to convince yourself that you'll ever be able to live without me. Pretty difficult, huh?"

"No; a girl's got to strut her independence eventually, and one day I likely will."

"Yeah, feel free to make that happen within the decade; I'd really appreciate it."

"I'll consider it," she said, and resumed regarding her tea. It was only then that she realized that Dave had performed another verbal dodge, nearly giving her an entirely successful slip -- but it was a revelation she made in tandem with a brilliant new idea. "Say, Dave," she said, looking back up from her tea without so much as a sip. She had not spoken especially dangerously, but Dave already began to frown in response. "Could I wish for you, personally, to teach me about magic, or 'magic theory' as you called it?"

This must have been a very real possibility that Dave had been attempting to avoid, because he seemed to physically deflate at the question, an ability only enhanced by his genie magic. He resumed his full volume after a moment with a soft pop, but still frowned. "You could," he said, and left it at that.

"And would you?"

"It's a valid wish; I wouldn't exactly be able to reject it."

"Hm. You don't sound very enthused about the prospect."

"Can't fuckin' imagine why. I'm sure it has nothing to do with being enslaved, or having to do shit I don't particularly wanna do in that enslavement."

"Oh, come now," said Rose, putting her hands together and resting her chin atop them. "Haven't you always had a secret fantasy about teaching a blissfully ignorant mortal girl, such as myself, everything there is to know about magic? Of all the achingly long hours of a forbidden meeting, spent between magical teacher and nonmagical student, alone together and going through the motions like clockwork until there comes a final successful push, from which our actions fantastically conclude themselves in a stunning climax of time and effort?"

Dave did not even have to think about it.

"No."

Rose frowned, sullenly twitching her bottom lip at him, and so Nepeta chose this time to chime in with, "I think he pre-furs that fantasy when it's the other way around. You know, when he gets to be the misbehaving student, forced to stay after class with the strict and o-fur-bearing teacher, both stuck together in a mutually-demanding marathon of purr-sonal involvement, ultimately spanning days and weeks to fully satisfy the student's extensive 'special' needs?"

Dave belched rather loudly at that moment, to dissuade either of them from continuing their newfound tactic. "I'd tell you two to go fuck yourselves, but..." He paused, and raised a hand to his chin. "...actually, even with your bullshit innuendo, I don't see a reason not to." Calmly, he regarded Nepeta and Rose together, and said, "Ladies, go fuck yourselves. If you need a cactus, just ask; I'll provide one free of charge."

"No thank you, Dave," said Rose, while Nepeta fiddled carefully with a middle finger salute. "But, I wish for you to teach me, at my leisure, all there is to know about magic."

"Yeah, I'll bet you do," said Dave, lacking enthusiasm.

"By the way, I wish for one hundred more wishes, too."

Dave snapped his fingers, and shook his head slowly. "Lost count again, huh?"

"No; I've just resigned myself to a system where, if I think for even a moment to question the number of wishes I have left, I'll wish for an even greater number of wishes than I wished for before. It pretty much guarantees that I will never run out of wishes so long as I live."

"Congratulations; that's a very clever application of utter laziness and wish-insecurity." With great volume, Dave cracked his neck to the side, and sat down on the open space just behind the teapot's table. "So when do you want that education?"

"Truthfully, I think I'd like to get started on it right away. Unless, that is, you can safely use magic to insert the knowledge into my mind in a quicker fashion."

Dave barked out a short laugh. "Yeah, no. Definitely not gonna do that, too dangerous. Genies aren't even allowed to manipulate the mind; it's something else that's against the rules."

"Too difficult for you?" The question was somewhere between genuine curiosity and a slight teasing quality.

"Manipulating the mind? Hell no; easy as shit. Easier than shit in fact. The difficulty is so far below that of the fecal matter in question it is practically incomparable; the shit actually looks obscenely difficult by comparison. Now, doing it safely, and not just turning you into a comatose vegetable? _Helluva_ lot more complex. Plus there's pretty much this idea going around in the magical community about mental sanctity which forbids it anyway."

"Hold on, didn't you explicitly read my mind at one point?"

"You bet your ass I did; the sanctity's about altering minds though, not observing them."

"Hm. Well, at any rate, the sooner we can start my education, the sooner you'll surely be glad it is finished."

"Correct you abso-fuckin'-lutely are; so let's start this educational shitstorm already."

Dave stood up, and emphatically snapped his fingers in an especially loud manner. Following a shuddering pause, the room around them dissolved into the influence of an expanding sphere, originating in the middle of their sitting room and ending beyond their sight, past the walls. The transition just barely happened slowly enough for them to acknowledge the sphere's expanse, and for a brief moment Rose worried that she might inadvertently wind up inside something as the room changed from one to another.

Her worries only manifested in a short fall as her chair erased itself from under her, a fate Nepeta narrowly avoided by skillfully standing up at the right time; beyond this, no injuries were suffered.

When the transition finished, they were all in a much smaller, utilitarian classroom, with about six small desks in position across a space which could have easily held at least eighteen. The room was rectangular, but only slightly, and had a very plain metal desk sitting at the front end, behind which lay an impossibly outdated green chalkboard. Three wide windows lined the wall to its left, while the right was blank save for a single door with a small window on it, through which a fragment of an empty hallway could be seen. The three windows, meanwhile, displayed only a perfectly white space outside, yet it was a sort of dulled white in very intangible senses.

This is to say that, although it was very clearly as white as it could possibly get outside the window, much like the inside of Rose's dimension before she had Dave put anything in it, the light it produced was significantly lesser compared to it, and the interior of the classroom was noticeably dimmed as a whole. The level of light was comparable to that of a room bathed in an average sunset, minus the orangey quality of any skies outside.

"Shit, did I seriously leave a metal desk in here? These things are all hells of uncomfortable; what the fuck was I thinking?" Dave kicked the large desk with his right foot, striking it without so much as a clang or a thump, where it remained for a quiet few moments. Immediately afterwards, Dave began to laugh. "Oh yeah," he said, chuckling, "I was explaining magnetism. Fucking classic." Dave snapped his fingers, and the desk changed to a simple wooden one, whereupon his foot was released from its grasp. No one questioned why his foot would be affected by magnetism; instead, Rose got up from the floor, dusted herself off, and examined the view through the door's window.

"And this is...?" she trailed off. In the hall, she could spot several pristine lockers sitting in a line along a wall, all on top of glossy tile, with no signs of use, decoration, or age to any of it.

"A door," Dave said helpfully.

"I meant in terms of location."

"Oh; the space in front of the door," he corrected.

"No, Dave; in a grander sense of area than that."

"Well, in case you hadn't noticed, currently we are in a classroom. My classroom, I'll have you know. I mean all of the classrooms in this school are mine but, this is really the only one I use these days."

"And your classroom is where?"

"East wing of the school."

Rose sighed. "And your _school_ is where? No esoteric answers this time, please."

"'S in a pocket dimension. Where the fuck else would I put it?"

"I wanted to be sure. For all I knew, you had just taken us to an official magical school of some sort, probably during after-hours given its emptiness, or perhaps one that had been abandoned due to, I don't know, magical radiation."

Dave snorted to himself, moving around his desk to 'sit' in the cushy leather seat behind it. That is, to put his rear on its seat, while his legs crossed over one another atop his desk, for maximum leisure in both appearance and personal comfort. "Magical radiation? Don't be ridiculous; we have hazmat teams to clean up any magical radiation leaks. Anyway, this technically still _is_ a magical school, it's just not a _public_ magical school. Nope; you are officially in the Strider's Private Academy for Ridiculously Killable Lil' Earthpeople, or S.P.A.R.K.L.E. for short. It's a recent name, named after one of the greatest magical purple characters I've ever seen in fiction. I considered 'Earthmen' for the name, like in those shitty sci-fi movies with sentient aliens, but that would've been ridiculously sexist of me, so 'Earthpeople' it is."

"Killable?" Rose asked flatly, expertly ignoring most of what Dave had just said.

"Hey, making acronyms isn't easy; I had to put a 'K' word in there somewhere if I wanted it to work. Besides, 'killable' seemed the most appropriate, especially given this place's reputation."

"Oh? Your school has a reputation?" Rose asked, and only officially processed what Dave had said a moment after.

"You're not the first human to ask me how magic works, Rose. I've been around for a good few centuries, as with inquisitive humans, and so too has this classroom persisted in its past-present existing all the while. If you're lucky, and don't ask for too many live examples of all the magical shit we cover, you'll live longer than a lot of most of my past students."

Rose considered this. "Have people only died here as a result of their own negligence, then?"

"Pretty-fuckin'-much; if I was just taking people here to personally slaughter them I'd've been taken off to a dank magical prison a long time ago. With magical law in mind though, it gets into sort of a grey area when someone wishes for something that can ultimately kill them very easily -- but rest assured I've never outright killed a human in this classroom just because I wanted to. I've inadvertently given them the means time and time again, sometimes to fantastically hilarious and bloody ends, but its always only ever been at their behest; my conscience is as clean and pristine as a fat man's treadmill."

"I'm sure," mused Rose, and there was no serious doubt in her voice; she had plenty of reason to believe that if Dave could permanently dispose of her, he would. Along that same line of thought, she hoped that there was no such thing as a magical mafia -- or, if there was, that humans were off-limits for any and all of their hitlists.

"Hey, Rose," said Nepeta, drawing her attention easily. "Would you mind if I went back to the house?"

Rose frowned, but nodded. "Not at all. No interest in learning or relearning about magic?"

"No, not exactly; it's just that I've been here be-fur, including when Dave has... had students," she said delicately. "Plus, I wanna try painting in my room, so I can get a feel fur it."

Rose nodded again, understanding, and turned to Dave. "If you'd do the honors?"

"Yeah, whatever." Dave snapped his fingers, and a small spherical opening opened up around Nepeta, revealing the sitting room inside; it closed directly afterwards, and took Nepeta along for the ride. "So, where d'y'wanna begin?"

"What?" gasped Rose, while settling herself on top of one the six smaller desks. Its surface looked more comfortable than the chair pushed into it. "I thought you were the educator here; you don't have an itinerary set out already?"

"I recall the precious little ape-descended human wishing to be taught about magic 'at her leisure'; are _you_ saying you don't have anything in mind to leisurely learn about?"

"Alright," said Rose in a brave attempt not to argue with the insufferable prick in the room, "how about the basics of it all? We can start wherever you normally begin these classes of yours."

"You know, it's funny; everyone always asks to start where the last person started, or some similar variation. I can't even remember the first wide-eyed little human who wanted me to teach 'em at this point, but I bet they were an absolute fuckin' delight if I was willing to make this classroom for 'em. It has been updated over the years, as you might have guessed -- but! Never mind that right now. Alright," said Dave, rubbing his hands together, "the 'normal' start, as requested by one Rosaline Lalonde."

Dave stood up from his chair, arched his back in a short stretch, and clapped his hands together twice. Immediately, a deafening explosion sounded, on its tail a large shock wave which rumbled through the classroom and threatened to reduce it to fine dust. It did not, however; instead, the space outside the window became slowly darker, while the light inside the room became greater, and the intense image of the blinding burst through the window came into focus. The rumblings did not quickly subside, instead fanning out over a period of several minutes, while clumps of gas, solids and plasma flew in all directions outside, decorating a black backdrop of endless space.

" _The beginning!_ " Dave said dramatically, his words echoing over the residual booming even while Rose could not hear her own voice. "Of both your education _and_ our universe of origin. It is, of course, just a dramatization outside, but that drama-t is as scientifically realistic as it gets! No artistic liberties taken here, I assure you. Now, I'm sure you've heard of that theory where a giant impossible explosion is what created everything in the known universe, even though nobody's totally sure why or how. Turns out it's true; fancy that, huh? Some mass was there for one reason, something happened to it for another reason, and then everything slowly became what it is today. These days though, in the magical community at least, nobody really cares why it happened; it's the aftereffects that's got everyone's interest."

Several pieces of chalk began to levitate in front of the board, each rising up from their resting place just below it before sliding across it, every piece working to create a curve or line that constituted a large picture, until an intricate diagram of intertwined arrows, lines, and bends took up the majority its surface. "The first thing you need to know about the universe, among things you probably don't already know, anyway, is that there are without a doubt more dimensions than those basic physical three. I don't remember how big the number gets, but before you start making connections lemme stop you, or else you'll fall into a common goddamn pitfall of redundancy."

Dave pushed his chair off to the side, and swiped at the chalkboard, manipulating its drawing as though it was a physical shape. "There's a distinct sorta difference," he said while turning the drawn arrangement in a confusing spectacle of image-alteration, "between a dimension like what you've got your new house in, and something like a single line in your basic geometry class." As Dave spoke, the shape on the board slowly morphed into a box, and then a single line, seeming to break its own construction several times over before coming back together in an incredibly efficient, albeit complicated manner.

"'Dimension' is a pretty fuckin' agonizingly vague term, if I'll be honest, and it's been redefined a lot over the years; all you need to be aware of right now is that any time a physical space is referred to as a 'dimension,' all that's being spoken about is the physical space it consists of, without regards to any other physical dimensions it might be connected to. See, all dimensions in a given universe are connected, just like all the universes in a given multiverse-cluster are connected, which are connected even further in the grand space of a single reality, and it all just kinda scales upwards in that sort of continual collective grouping. Still with me?" Thoughtfully, Dave spared a look behind him to ask that last question.

Rose was still sitting on her desk, boggling vacantly over why she ever held even the slightest semblance of a belief that Dave would make for a reasonable teacher, but, all things considered, she was mostly sure she had caught all that despite her current deafness, which Dave seemed to be ignoring. That is, ignoring it by speaking to her in a perfectly crisp manner even while her ears still rung. "Was such a volume really necessary?" she asked, or at least she thought so; her voice sounded muffled and half-submerged in water to her.

"No," he said, "if I wanted to, I could have easily replicated the correct level of noise, but you'd probably have died from the vibrations alone, so I decided to tone it all down just for you."

"How thoughtful," Rose commented, and amidst her partial deafness felt a bothersome lack of confidence in having said it sarcastically enough. Not that Dave would have reacted any differently; it was just the principle of the thing that mattered.

"Thank you; always feels good to be appreciated. Now, if you don't have any questions, let's continue."

In a single fluid movement, Dave reared back, and slammed a fist into the chalkboard. It smashed inwards, shattering and tinkling like glass, and gave way to, apparently, a physical space. Inside was Dave's drawing, still indecipherable to Rose in its transformations, slowly turning and shifting in ways that should have been outright impossible if it followed the standard laws binding Euclidean geometry.

"Come on," Dave said, waving Rose over before carefully stepping past the chalkboard's original boundaries. "This part's a lot more exciting when viewed from closer up -- and trust me, for what we're about to cover, it makes a difference."

Rose did not particularly want to find out what Dave was implying might lose excitement if viewed from a safe distance, but given the afterthought that there was likely no such thing as a safe distance in here, she reluctantly joined him in the chalkboard, stepping through with trepidation and gazing up at the tangle of dusty, firmly-aligned chalk.

"This," Dave said in introduction, carefully manipulating his creation from a distance, "is a brief history of the universe."

They then proceeded to have one of the most boring magical lessons in the collective history of their multiverse-cluster.


	10. Education

"...and that's where magical babies come from." With a final stroke of the piece of chalk he had been holding, as opposed to the ones still hanging in the air around him, Dave finished writing everything he intended to for his lecture. The re-re-re-rebuilt chalkboard was absolutely littered with diagrams and short, incomplete sentences, and now that it was full, Dave breezily turned around to gauge Rose's reaction to the end of his verbal spiel.

Rose was sitting at the desk in the middle-front of the room, scribbling in a black notebook with a purple pen, both of which she had wished for not long after beginning her educational endeavors. Daring to think a little creatively, Rose had wished for the journal to extend to an infinite number of pages, so that she could never run out of room to write, doodle, or otherwise make use of it. To prevent any fumbling with its expansive text, she made sure to also wish for each page to be numbered appropriately, as well as an automatically-updating table of contents. The pen, meanwhile, had the simple boon of never running out of ink, and had been made with the same sort of principles applied to it as the book: it was neither any larger in physical size, and in fact weighed no more than a regular pen would for having a limitless supply of ink.

Without so much as a glance up from her journal, in which she was still idly penning notes and personal conjecture, Rose replied boredly, "Dave, I have been paying attention throughout our entire lesson; abruptly saying that to check whether I am listening has long since proved itself a purposeless endeavor."

"Maybe," admitted Dave, shrugging. "But old habits die hard -- and it's always fun to make people question context. Even if you're fuckin' annoyingly adept at it."

Briefly, a small smirk graced Rose's lips, but she remained focus on her writings. "You sound upset that I actually make for a good student."

"A little." Dave turned to waggle his fingers at all the chalk as he spoke, and one by one they fell into line at the chalkboard's base. "I mean I was pretty sure when we started that you weren't gonna fuck around, and admittedly that's not completely awful; we get through this shit a lot faster as a result and that's fine with me. It just means that I don't have as many opportunities to have fun during my lectures. Entertainment is a two-way street, believe it or not; the audience has to give just as much as the entertainer. Usually, they give laughter and appreciation of humor, while being given something to laugh about -- so obviously when the audience doesn't laugh the entertainer doesn't exactly feel encouraged."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Rose said in a voice which entirely failed to convey it, "is my studiousness preventing you from enjoying your regular accretion of self-indulgent reverie?"

"Nah, not really," Dave said easily, "'smore like you're generally too uptight for your own good, and that's boring as all hell. Seeing as school of any kind is _already_ boring, that makes for a hellaciously awful combination. Like a double hell, with flames that burn twice as hot and a horned demon dude who has _at least_ twice as many pitchforks to do some unruly jabbing at people with."

Several moments of relative quiet passed as Rose continued scribbling in her journal, not caring enough to respond.

Eventually, with a small twirling flourish, she finished writing and triumphantly raised her pen from the paper. Her eyes rose to surpass it, and she produced a level stare for Dave. "Dave, tell me something: have you never had to stay with a single human for this long before? Is this, in fact, the limit of your attention span at its maximum?"

"No, and fuck no; I've had people take goddamn months to use their last wish before. And that is _people_ \-- plural. All of 'em so concerned with how to use it that they nearly never did."

"And none of them ever wished for extra wishes, even after the exorbitant amounts of time they spent ruminating on it?"

Dave shrugged. "Not in the same way you did. Most of 'em decided not to pursue it when I told them they can't wish for infinite wishes -- you know, like a respectful gaggle of humans."

Rose beamed in response to this revelation. "So I am, without a doubt, a very special and unique human."

"Eh, depends on how you define 'special,' but sure."

"I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume we are both thinking of the same positive connotation."

Dave said nothing in response to this, and instead addressed Rose's journal, nodding towards it. "So how much do you really think that thing's gonna come in handy, anyway? I mean, besides the fact that you've done a frankly astounding  _fuckall_ with your wishes so far, how exactly is your personal understanding of magic gonna help you any time in the near future?"

After a moment's thought, which was taken with utmost seriousness, Rose shrugged. "That's the thing about the future for us mere mortals, Dave: it's uncertain. I might need to look in these pages twenty times a day for every day following this one, and I might never need it once. I don't yet know, but I do intend to be ready if and when it becomes relevant."

"Yeah yeah; whatever," Dave said, dismissively waving his hand. "You satisfied with all the information you've got, then? Don't need any reviews or fuckin' pop quizzes?"

Their 'lesson,' having covered not only multiple topics regarding magic but damn near all of them, besides covering them all in a single marathon, had gotten on in the numbers of hours, days, and in fact weeks of their time it took to go over it all -- this, by extension, meant that Dave was entirely ready to once again be finished with his educational expositions in this school.

Rose afforded her journal a long look, as if reviewing all the information within just by looking at the two pages it was open to, before nodding. "I believe I am. This has been a surprisingly educational mutual expenditure of our time, and unless you have been surreptitiously hiding something like 'black magic' from me, I think I know all I would like to."

"Black magic is such a fuckin' bullshit idea," commented Dave, shaking his head. "You humans are so goddamn infatuated with your morals and concepts of 'right and wrong' that you even apply it to _magic_. Magic, of all things! Fucking ridiculous."

"Oh, no," Rose said while raising a hand to her mouth in mock-gasp. "I didn't strike a nerve, did I?"

"You," Dave said while pointing a finger at her, "struck a nerve when you waltzed up to me and asked for infinite wishes. And then another one when you wished for finite wishes. Everyone else is annoying solely on the fact that they're human, and therefore infinitely more likely than any other species in our universe to say or think something stupid."

Softly, nearly inaudibly, Rose sighed, before gently closing her journal and picking it up as she stood. "Still holding onto that discrimination, I see."

"Rose, I'm awful fuckin' sorry that you haven't broken the mold enough for me to regularly stroke your ego as though it were a delightful little kitten, but believe it or not making a wish that traps me in your service does not a happy genie make. Would my opinion of you improve if you weren't treating me like a personal magic slave? Yeah, maybe; it's neither here nor there. I _could_ ramble on and on about how you're completely defeating the purpose of my role as a genie by keeping me around for so long, and how you're basically ruining any and all theoretical wish-based economies with all the goddamned wish-inflation you're causing by wishing for more wishes -- but I won't. I'll just vaguely allude to it, kinda like I just did."

A frown slid into place on Rose's lips, but its edges turned back upwards soon enough. "You aren't going to guilt me into letting you go, Dave."

"Oh, I don't intend to," came the immediate response. "It'll be much easier to annoy the shit out of you instead."

"Don't expect to keep that expectation," Rose warned. "I've been practicing in dealing with your horseshit for a while now, and I'm only getting better with every passing minute."

"Aw," Dave said as he clasped his hands together, "that's fuckin' adorable, thinking you've seen enough of me to know how not to be infuriated by my actions. Don't get too sure of yourself, Rose -- I'm _really_ good at pressing people's buttons, and I've had more years to practice it than you've had to avoid it."

"Hm. Fair point," Rose conceded, closing her eyes and nodding once, "but in that case, I intend to prove myself a faster learner than yourself."

"Good luck," Dave said, and provided a well-defined end to their conversation by opening a new trans-dimensional door to Rose's home. He stepped through, Rose following shortly after, and both of them appeared in the upstairs hallway just outside of Nepeta's room.

"Knock knock," said Dave, timing it with two heavy knocks on her door. Several moments later Nepeta opened it and, upon confirming that it was indeed Dave who had knocked, threw the contents of a self-refilling bucket of green paint at him.

Dave smiled pleasantly, unwavering and fearless, as the paint flew straight towards him. He continued to smile as it passed through his body without so much as a drop actually landing anywhere on him. And, altogether, he failed to stop smiling when the paint struck and splattered all over Rose just behind him.

The flat smirk Nepeta wore for the occasion had already turned into a bitter frown by the time she saw the paint passing entirely through Dave, but it was to Dave's distinct pleasure that as soon as he took a single step to the side, her expression fell immediately into one of unmitigated horror. "Ohmygosh, Rose, I'm so sorry, I didn't know mew were there!" In a second, she looked between Rose and Dave more than six times, respectively frightful and angry between the two of them as she quickly weighed how much of this was her fault, and how much was Dave's. Ultimately, it was she who had wielded the bucket, and that put a lot of blame on her shoulders.

Meanwhile, Rose stood still, dripping slightly as the paint magically refused to dry on her person. Carefully, slowly, she used her thumbs -- which had managed to come out of the ordeal relatively clean -- to wipe the paint from her closed eyelids. Just as carefully, she opened her eyes, and to her credit retained a perfectly calm demeanor. "You have impeccable aim," she said, her voice serenely devoid of heated intent.

"Not really," Dave said, shaking his head. "She was clearly aiming for me, but not even one measly fuckin' drop of the paint she tossed hit its mark. Pretty goddamn shoddy if you ask me."

"Rest assured," replied Rose, "that no one did ask you. Though, I will ask that you please remove this paint from my person."

"Alright." A brief silence passed as no one, including Dave, did anything. Paint slowly dripped to the floor, preventing a firm silence from taking hold.

"Dave, could you please remove this paint from me?"

"Mmm... sure, yeah, I could do that, definitely," he added, nodding. Still, he refused to actually do anything.

Rose sighed when she finally realized why, but adamantly cut the sigh short; she had a threshold of annoyance to build. "Dave, I wish for you to remove this paint from me -- all of it."

"You got it, boss," Dave said with a click of his tongue, and snapped his fingers. At once, all the paint lifted off Rose's skin, hair, and clothing -- even the carpeting around her lost its new color -- as it amassed in a growing sphere just before them. The sensation was odd, Rose found, not like being dried so much as the direct inversion of entering a pool, as the wetness all over her suddenly receded and left her entirely unblemished by it.

Nepeta breathed a sigh of relief when the floating ball of paint between her and Rose finished its collections, her good friend thankfully unharmed by the paint and now no longer covered in it. Unfortunately, the feeling was short-lived; the glob suddenly flew straight towards Nepeta, and she could barely squeeze out a shriek as the paint swapped biological canvasses.

"Dave!" she cried, having just managed to turn away as paint sunk itself into her hair, and lightly streaked across one cheek, like a deep cut revealing olive-colored blood.

"What?" Dave asked innocently.

"Dave," chided Rose, even less amused.

"What?" he repeated. "You told me to remove it from you, so I did."

"I did not mean for you to transfer it to Nepeta, and you know it."

"Excuse you, I do _not_ know it; I may be able to read minds, but even if you had been angrily thinking that distinction at me I'm not allowed to take thoughts into account with wishes. Words only, Rose. Besides, this was way more hilarious than if I had just dumped it all onto her magically-absorbent carpet."

"It's okay, Rose," Nepeta said unexpectedly, interrupting Rose before she could start to wish the paint off of Nepeta, or distinctly wish it anywhere reasonable and safe. She turned towards Rose, her eyes and mouth unmarred by the paint, and continued. "This actually gives me a good excuse to try out the new bathroom, too."

An unspoken agreement was suddenly reached between Rose and Nepeta, and the two smiled within a second of one another.

"Oof, I know that smile," said Dave with a knowing air, casually glancing between the two of them as though it was his secret rather than theirs, "and that is some extremely hardcore homosexual action you are shooting for. But hey -- to each their own. You're two consenting adults and I won't stop you from the wickednasty bathtimes you're clearly about to have."

"You won't be joining us, Dave," Rose said, to preempt any antics Dave might see fit to set up in the bathroom ahead of them.

A quizzical look crossed Dave's face, faintly visible from behind his sunglasses. "I... didn't say I would be," he offered, sounding confused. "Holy fuck, what kind of a raunchy-ass pervert do you take me for? I enjoy practical jokes, Rose, not softcore pornography. That's kind of my thing as a genie, remember? I mean it doesn't say in the handbook that we specifically _don't_ enjoy softcore porn but the joke thing is still a requirement, and most days it really manages to keep me busy."

"You have stripped the both of us against our will before," Rose reminded him, quirking an eyebrow.

"Yeah, because that was a practical joke; just watching you two get it on in a big steamy bathtub isn't. _Fuck_ , Rose, you are a dense motherfucker even for a human. Shame on me for thinkin' you'd've gotten the gist of how a genie operates by now; but whatever. Go do your thing. I'll be around; call me if you suddenly find yourself lacking in arms to scrub each other with -- I'm _awesome_ at magical surgeries and people almost never regret getting a third arm."

Dave saluted, and began to walk towards the stairs, softly whistling a tune to himself. Nepeta, meanwhile, stepped out of her room to hurry down the hall to the bathroom, but Rose was busy frowning at Dave. "Where are you going?" she asked accusingly, crossing her arms.

The question gave Dave pause, abruptly halting him mid-stride. Slowly, he swiveled around on the foot still touching the ground, until he faced Rose. "Downstairs?" he said without certainty. "You literally just told me I'm not even allowed to bathe with you guys, so 'generally away from the bathroom' seemed like a valid option. In hindsight I have absolutely no clue what the fuck I was thinking in believing something so incredibly unreasonable."

"Mm," hummed Rose, considering this. "I don't think I trust you enough to let you wander off on your own."

Dave blinked, uselessly, and barely kept from laughing. He resolved himself into snickering instead. "Okay, Miss Trust," he said after a moment, dispelling his own mirth. "Then should I just stand inside the bathroom with my back turned to you so you can keep an eye on me?"

"No; I definitely trust you even less to do that, regardless of any temptations to turn around."

"Oh my god, you seriously do have trust issues, don't you? Why don't you tell me about it?" Dave asked, adding a pair of rounded spectacles over his sunglasses, while pulling out a plain notepad and pen. He gestured towards a chaise longue beside her, and mumbled with subdued interest, "Where did it all start? Mommy issues? Daddy issues? Sibling rivalry?"

"I have an idea," Rose said without acknowledging Dave's actions. "Dave, I wish for you to go to your room."

"Ah, so it's mommy issues," Dave muttered placidly, nodding to himself and scribbling something down on his notepad. "You're acting as a maternal figure in the absence of one sufficiently provided to you." He did not argue with her wish, however, and walked over to his closet of a room. His body and everything held by it phased through the door, ducking down slightly to fit properly. As an afterthought, he turned around and opened the door. "Actually," he continued, writing again, and now proportionally smaller to accommodate the closet's height, "did you ever have a father around? What happened to him? Death? Divorce? Never married to begin with?"

"My past is not a topic up for discussion right now, Dave."

"Not with that attitude; see, Rose, the thing about psychiatry is that it will only be effective if you don't keep your secrets all bottled up."

"Dave, I do not want a genie to play psychiatrist for me. Not right now, and especially not you."

"Why not? Too afraid of what I'll dig up?"

"Hardly; my fears are more along the lines of how qualified you are, or rather aren't."

"So the fact that I'm not at all unqualified bothers you?"

Rose shot Dave a glare, and opened her mouth to retort, but softly closed it again as she realized that it was entirely possible for Dave to possess the necessary knowledge to pass for a fully-educated therapist. Even if everything he had taught her about magic was somehow a gigantic farce, he had proven to know quite a bit about math and science as she knew it, which were apparently complementary to many magic principles. The capacity was certainly within him.

"Okay," she said, "let's say you are, without a shadow of a doubt, genuinely qualified to diagnose and treat any and all mental disorders that I might possibly have, from a variety of sources which I never previously considered. First of all, what do you have to gain from it?"

"Well to start with, I gain the ability to insinuate that you wanna bang your mom."

"Of course," intoned Rose, shaking her head.

"Also, fun is a really tricky concept, and while I don't know how exactly to convey to you that I would find it 'fun' to psychoanalyze you, and in fact I'm not even totally sure _why_ I would find it fun, just believe me when I say that I would find it _outrageously_ fun."

"I'll consider your generous offer," Rose said without conviction. "Now be a good little genie and stay in your room."

To prevent Dave from aptly responding, Rose closed the door on him, locked it, and walked off to check up on Nepeta.

Rose was entirely surprised not to see or hear the door she walked away from exploding off its hinges, among other potential catastrophes, and so she had a fading, slightly bewildered look on her face when she entered the bathroom.

Inside, the most immediately noticeable fact about the bathroom was that nearly everything had been constructed from marble. (For reference, the second and third most immediately noticeable facts were, respectively, how absurdly large the entire bathroom was, and how preposterously it had been filled with steam.) Milky streaks ran through every available surface, even if the marble in a particular place was not especially white -- and there were sections of marble which were grey, purple, and black, among other complementing colors. All over the room, there were odd marble swirls swirling within more natural milky marble swirls, and the entire thing looked as if a ton of cake batter had spilled absolutely everywhere, if the batter had been given some generous doses of different food colorings which independently refused to mix with the other food colorings, and had been distributed without any sensible cake batter distribution methods. The only objects not made of marble were instead made of shiny golden-grey metals, and they were the faucets and drains and similar, appropriately located here or there where water needed to be distributed rather than contained.

Given that Rose no longer needed a toilet for much of anything other than decoration, and that she had not given in to putting one down even then, the bathroom had been entirely, appropriately dedicated to bathing. This translated to mean that three quarters of the floor were dominated by one large marble bathtub, a bathtub which was closer to a swimming pool in some places given the depth, but far warmer and with more magical filters, as well as a certain inherent magical murkiness.

A few standing marble islands were positioned in the bathtub, featuring several bottles of all manner of cleansing products, self-refilling of course, and a few showerheads specifically calibrated to dispense what Rose believed to be the most enjoyable temperature of hot water. The shower heads were each conveniently attached to a hose connected to the wall, and overall the bathroom resembled a sauna and spa more than a bathroom, but it was Rose calling the shots in what was named what here, and she had insisted this place was still technically for bathing -- hence, bathroom.

"Hey Rose!" Nepeta called from somewhere in the thick mist, which may or may not have been a cheeky magical addition Rose had had Dave add at some point, so as to serve the dual purpose of continual humid warmth and obscuring of nudity. Splashing sounds accompanied it, meaning she was likely swimming around somewhere, and Rose found this odd for a small number of reasons, the least of which being that Nepeta had an affinity for cats and, well, one tended not to expect such a person to also harbor an affinity for any large body of water in any way whatsoever.

"Hello!" Rose replied cheerily, because what was there to not be cheery about? She had, as far as she could tell, just successfully managed to shut Dave up, _and_ ensured that he would stay in one place until she retrieved him. She should have been actively celebrating right now.

"Did you settle e-fur-ything with Dave? He's not in here, is he?" The splashing sounds manifested themselves in a fog-obscured Nepeta, who swam out from behind a marble island. Most of the green paint was gone now, and the sparse remains were slowly dissolving in the magically self-cleansing water. (The water had been a bit of a bitch to set up, so as to remove contaminants without fundamentally erasing the people who bathed in it, but Rose felt the effort had been worth it for a room as expansive, warm, and hygienic as this one.)

"I did," Rose replied with a happy nod, "and he's not. He should be puttering around in his room, and... possibly enchanting it in his inevitable boredom. It _has_ just occurred to me that I never told him he could not modify it from within. But! So long as any feasible modifications of his stay in there, and there alone, I suppose that's good enough."

"He does tend to get bored easily, sorta," Nepeta said, nodding sagely. "Or maybe he just likes to show off? It's hard to tell with him."

As Nepeta swam closer, Rose took the opportunity to sit down beside the enormous tub, crossing her legs at the edge, and resisting the temptation to dip her feet in the water. It was warm and humid enough in the steam, really, making the task an easy one. "So, how is the bath? Are you enjoying the facilities like you thought you would?"

Nepeta made a face, which was not quite a frown, but was definitely as scrunched up as one, and she jiggled it around a bit to test its flexibility. "I guess," she decided, with just enough conviction to convey honesty. "Mostly, I'm a little bummed that Dave is so much less fun to bother now than I remember."

"Maybe we're just not trying hard enough?" Rose offered.

"That's a dangerous road, Rose; the further we drop ourselves down to his level, the closer we get to being run right o-fur by all his genie shenanigans!" For emphasis, Nepeta splashed at the water a little, narrowly avoiding smacking it towards Rose.

Rose smiled, and shrugged. "Just a suggestion."

"What are you planning on doing with him, anyway?"

"Hm?"

"With all the wishes you've been stocking up with him. What are you gonna do with them?"

"Oh, that. Right. Honestly, I don't know."

"...Seriously?" Nepeta sunk a little in the water, her eyes widening and lips pouting.

Its effect was minimal, but obvious on Rose. "Well, I have some ideas," she said in correction, "but a lot of them are just... unfinished. It's honestly a problem I never thought I would have, but now that I've got Dave and the nigh-limitless power his magic brings... I don't know at all what to do with it. There are so many options that, in the face of knowing what I _could_ do with his power, I'm unsure what I _should_ do with it.

"For instance," Rose said suddenly, sitting up a little straighter, "in no time at all, I could help humanity progress through countless tiers of technology, and even magic, closing the gap between magical and nonmagical beings until it is practically nonexistent. There would likely still be inherent discrimination, yes, but I could use my will and Dave's powers to create a whole new era of peaceful coexistence, immortalizing myself and possibly even Dave as iconic historical figures, favorable ones if I play my cards right."

"But," Nepeta guessed as she swam over to the tub's edge, crossing her arms on it and resting her head atop them, "you don't know whether that kinda shortcut is the right thing to force, do you?"

Rose shook her head. "Ultimately, the world is not on my shoulders, nor do I want it to be; it is currently not my responsibility and, frankly, knowing that, I'm just as tempted to shoot for the opposite. Easily, I think, I could wield Dave's power like a tyrant, and simply demolish the earth, or subject it to any number of awful disasters that would ultimately throw it into irrevocable ruin. Virulent diseases, worldwide droughts, unstoppable meteor showers -- any number of terrible fates that I could simply ask Dave to cause, and he would, while I might watch the fireworks from a bubble of safety in space, like a spiteful god finally taking matters into his own hands."

"You're not going to, right?" Nepeta did not sound worried, but there was a hint of concern in her voice. She had rather liked her time spent on the earth, and it would be a small shame if that planet was so suddenly discarded.

Rose shrugged helplessly, as if she had no control over whether these fates might occur, or which side of morality they might lean towards. "Obviously, there's something to be said here about power and responsibility, but the issues that come to my mind all concern whether the earth is worth fixing, if it is able to be fixed at all. Of course, I could just do nothing; if I wanted to, and I have been considering it over the past few relative weeks of sitting through Dave's classes, I could just live out the rest of my days in this cozy space I've built for myself, reading books, petting cats, perhaps finally taking my knitting or writing seriously, and simply living a quiet, enjoyable life."

There was a brief pause as Rose seemed to lose focus of her words, before she straightened up and continued speaking. "And beyond all that, as far as huge social changes go -- if I ever decide that I definitely, absolutely _do_ want to make the world a significantly better or worse place -- I don't even understand the rules binding Dave's magic well enough to know if I  _can_. He's taught me plenty," Rose said while raising the journal that, in hindsight, she probably should not have brought somewhere so humid,  "but knowing what he is capable of doing, and what he is allowed to do, are two totally different circles. That is, unless I plan on getting Dave to bend or break some rules of his own volition, but of course I don't; not after I pretty much used those very same rules against him within the first few minutes of us meeting. Still, I suppose it couldn't hurt to ask to see that rulebook of his, so I can find out just what extremes I can push his magic to."

Nepeta thought about this for a moment, nodding, before an idea struck her. "Oh, I've got a copy," she said excitedly, and effortlessly withdrew one from absolutely nowhere, much like Dave would. Upon Rose's brief flash of confusion, Nepeta explained, "A few decades ago they issued these out, so that all magical beings have a mandatory copy, bound by... whate-fur magical thingy does it. The title says 'For All Magical Beings' right in it, after all."

"Ah," said Rose, her worries of whether Dave had somehow impersonated Nepeta now quelled. Mostly. "It won't get wet, will it?"

Nepeta produced a flat look. "Rose, it's a magic book; if it couldn't even handle water damage, no one in the magical world would take it seriously. I actually don't think _anything_ can destroy it. I've tried, too, dumping it off cliffs and into fires, just to see what would happen; it just kinda sits where-fur I leave it, and then pops back into my hand whene-fur I think about it again."

"Hm," mumbled Rose, before taking a quick peek through her journal's table of contents, and flipping through a couple hundred pages; she was sure something she had learned in the past week explained this, but could not immediately place it. As soon as she found the appropriate page, she emphatically put her finger down, smiling. "'Magical' atomic imprints," she said happily. And Dave had mocked her for keeping a journal. It did occur to her, however, that she would probably do well to wish for that effect on her journal while out in the field, so to speak. "Well, thank you, I'll be sure to give it a good read as soon as I can," said Rose, before taking the book as Nepeta handed it to her and stacking it atop her journal.

It was at this moment that a loud gurgling drew the attention of Rose and Nepeta. It had grown from a much softer gurgle, in turn arising from silence, and had been steadily raising in volume over the past twenty seconds. The bathwater churned some short distance away from the edge of the tub where Rose and Nepeta sat, bubbling and pulsating, moving up and down in unnatural waves until one final push broke the water's surface, and out popped a small cardboard box with a rusty drill on it. After its exit, which shot it perhaps half a meter into the air, it landed with a splash, and bobbed on the water's surface, the drill not weighing down the box's side in the slightest. It was to absolutely no one's surprise that when the top of the box opened up, Dave poked his head out immediately after, wearing a headlamp with coal dust smothered on his face.

"Aw, shit," he muttered, looking around wildly, and seeming to ignore the room's other two occupants. "Musta taken a wrong turn at Albuquerque."

"Dave, didn't I specifically tell you that you were not allowed to enter the bathroom?"

"Rose?" Dave remained still for a moment, then snapped his head towards her. "Oh, hey. Yeah, you said something like that; actually more like you firmly stated I wouldn't be joining you, like you could read the future or something. Pretty piss poor fortune-telling given that it didn't come true though."

"Moreover, didn't I specifically wish for you to stay in your room?"

"You didn't," said Dave, wagging a finger at her, "you just wished for me to go to my room. I did, and then I did some quantum drilling out of it to see if I still remembered how."

"You mean quantum tunneling?"

"Nope; quantum drilling." He patted the cardboard box he should not have been able to fit in, given its size, which had thusfar stubbornly refused to acknowledge its watery surroundings or sag because of them. "Drilling's a lot more efficient, honestly; doesn't have as many of the nasty side-effects that tunneling has. Less chance to collapse your quantum mines, and overall less deterioration of the environment you drill through. Oh, and before you get any clothing you may have removed in a twist, don't worry about modesty; I took out my eyes before coming here." To prove it, Dave momentarily lifted his sunglasses, revealing gaping black voids where his eyes would have been.

"Why would you remove your eyes if you didn't mean to come here? Unless the Albuquerque bit was for shits and giggles."

Dave stared on with a bemused expression for several long seconds. Eventually, he lashed out with, "Of course it was for shits and giggles, Rose! That is _literally_ what I do for a living: random miscellaneous laugh-worthy bullshit! My fucking god, how dense are you that you have not yet caught on to my position here as a genie? Do you just forget everything you hear two minutes after you hear it? I mean, _fuck_ , it's no fucking wonder you wished for that journal; you're gonna need to turn it into a goddamned by-the-second diary at this rate."

"Mm. Well, so long as you're here," said Rose, having lost most of her cheery disposition but still determined to hold fast to a single shred of enthusiasm, "I'd like to, regrettably, ask for your opinion on something."

"Okay, cool; shoot."

Rose was surprised by how quickly Dave switched from his condescension to such an easy acceptance of her request, and it showed as she found herself momentarily stunned. She quickly recovered. "How well do you think the magical world would take to me, say... removing a hefty chunk of the social and physical barriers they have instituted between themselves and the majority of the human race?"

"Fucking terribly," Dave said without a moment's hesitation, "which is exactly why it would be goddamned hilarious if you did."

Rose blinked. "You're not opposed to the idea?"

"Hell no; why would I be opposed to massively fucking up the status quo?"

"I... admittedly, do not have... a ready answer to that," Rose said, piecing together her words in small stutters. "It's just that your discrimination against humans--"

"Is a total fucking joke that even I don't take seriously, Rose." Airily, Dave put one of his arms on the top of his box's side, standing upright, and rested his chin atop it. "I cannot fucking _wait_ for the day when you fully realize just how much of what I say is complete bullshit. Like, don't get me wrong, you've done better than most; you pick up on like forty percent of the bullshit I say, and that's good. But that's still sixty percent shit you're missing out on, and I am fuckin' _pining_ for the days when we'll be having rapid-fire conversations that will just be so chock-full of combative verbal horseshit being flung towards one another at such incredible velocities that brick walls around us just explode on instinct." He released an appreciative whistle.  "Those'll be the days."

"That's..." Rose said, intending to describe it aptly and move on, but she could find no word to aptly describe what Dave had just said.

"A personal fantasy of mine," Dave finished for her. "Never mind it; izzat what'ch'r gonna do? Create social unrest in the magical community?"

"I... no. Maybe. I don't know," Rose concluded, shaking her head, "and I don't think the mist in here is going to help me think."

"Pft. Only have yourself to blame for that one."

"Look, how about I just -- whoa," Rose mumbled, slightly dizzying herself after suddenly standing up. "I'll go read this rulebook, and get back to the two of you once I've done that. Okay?"

"Fine with me," said Dave.

"Alright," Nepeta agreed, though she shot Dave a certain look after she had.

Rose was too busy considering the book in her hands to really think about the two of them, let alone the fact that Dave was technically still somewhere he should not have been, and left the bathroom without another word.

"You know, don't you?" Nepeta asked once she was gone, malice gone from her voice. Instead, she spoke quietly, with bitter acknowledgement.

"Course I fuckin' know. You think you're gonna catch onto something I don't, 'specially after you test it by giving her that book? Fuck, I knew it back when she was dicking around with my paintbrush."

"If she really does end up trying to change the world, you're going to have to tell her, Dave."

Dave gave Nepeta an incredulous look. "Fuck no! It'll be way more hilarious when she stumbles into it ass-backwards thinking she's high and mighty from being drunk off my power."

"I'll tell her," Nepeta threatened.

There was a tense pause as no one said anything. "Okay," Dave suddenly said with utmost nonchalance, shrugging. "Go right ahead."

Despite the open invitation, nobody made any movements. Nepeta remained submerged in the water from the neck down, and Dave sat still in his box, bobbing along in the water.

"Didn't think so," he said.

Nepeta frowned, and stuck her tongue out at him. She then replaced the expression with an abrupt, devious smile, and sunk beneath the water's surface until she disappeared completely in the clouded depths. It took Dave a moment, but he smiled with appreciative realization not long after. Promptly, he ducked down inside the box, digging around in unseen materials, before resurfacing with an already-inflated inflatable raft. Beneath him, and beneath his box, the water level steadily grew, and as it did so he threw the raft off to the far side of the engorged bathtub.

"One," he said to himself, standing up in the box, and managing to do so without knocking it over in its constant rocking sway.

"Two," he added, shifting to a crouching position. The water beneath him darkened in a wide area.

"Three!" Dave concluded, leaping from the box and sailing beautifully through the air towards the raft. Not a second after his jump did the head of a whale emerge from below the box, effortlessly tossing it up to crumple against the ceiling. The drill dissolved in the water splashed against it, like flimsy paper mache, but the box began to slowly expand. The whale must have been expecting this, as it ducked back down into the water just as soon as it came up. A small explosion blew outwards from the box, obliterating it completely and bringing the resulting fireball to a sizzle against the surface of the water.

"Ha," Dave said, and chuckled. "C'mon, that was weak," he said, peering over his raft and into the water. "Get up here and give me your best."

About ten seconds of silence passed, and Dave settled into a resting position on his raft as they did. On the eleventh second, a dolphin answered his call, jumping up near the raft and elegantly spinning to bring its tail down directly on the raft's end. It passed through Dave's legs there, but struck the raft perfectly, upending it and throwing Dave into the water -- or it would have, anyway, if he did not have the reflexes to begin floating. "Shit, nice," he said, nodding, as the dolphin reemerged, looking at him from a short distance away in the water. "Nearly got me. But you ain't got shit on my transformative magic; check it."

With a grunt of effort, Dave's skin turned to a deep, spotty red, while all of his hair receded into nothingness. His body quickly expanded, becoming bloated, far slicker, and gaining about six new fast-elongating limbs. The dolphin realized all too late what was happening, and could only dash across a third of the bath before a winding tentacle practically flew towards it, and slammed down into it. It was plucked from the water with ease, and brought over for closer inspection by the giant squid that Dave had become.

A large bubble escaped the squid, coming up from under it in the water and popping at its surface.

The dolphin responded by using its mouth to squirt water at the sunglasses over one of the squid's eyes -- sunglasses which did not strictly resemble sunglasses given the bent shape they had to take to fit across a giant squid's eyes, but rest assured they were, in fact, sunglasses.

The squid then promptly slammed the dolphin into the water.

Needless to say, this would lead to an aquatic battle for the ages, absolutely brimming with mindless violence and countless instances of water-based magical tomfoolery -- which is exactly why no more time needs to be spent focusing on it, amid more pressing and relevant concerns.

Such as, for instance, the contents of the book that Rose would begin to read on the couch downstairs, oblivious to the war unfolding in the bathroom.

"To whom it may concern," the first page of the book in her hands read, "of any level of magical talent except none, and any species existent in the relative world as we know it: the following content of this printing is a collection of, as this book's title may have led you to believe, rules, guidelines, and suggestions of a useful nature, regarding all manner of magical beings belonging to this universe. If you are not of this universe, but have managed to come across this book, the whole of us at Skaia Publishing implore you to heed the contents of this book, lest a terrible misunderstanding come to pass in our universe, and possibly yours as well."

The introduction continued on like this, outlining recommended actions should anyone not in strict possession of this book come across a copy of it, in a large variety of scenarios, most of which were ended simply by reading this book. Only one exception existed to this trend, and it was the scenario in which the reader is a magic-lacking human who has found the book, in which case the book recommended that they immediately return it to wherever they got it from, and leave it there for its owner to retrieve at their leisure, as would only be courteous.

Rose thought about that for a moment.

She then stopped thinking about it, and continued to read.

The introduction bled off into a table of contents, which marked off numerous different sections of the book to each magical species in the known universe, in alphabetical order. Mermaids, lycanthropes, fairies, sirens, all manner of halfling from gnome to dwarf to leprechaun, and, of course, genies were all jumbled together, as were many more. There were also sections which, rather than focusing on an individual species, provided advice for magical beings in general, plus a collection of addendums at the back.

It was quite a fair amount to read up on, even if there was only one section that Rose had really been searching for. Then again, it had been quite some time since she had read a good book... a set of magical laws was unorthodox reading material, sure, but it could scratch an itch in a pinch. Besides, Rose mused as she flipped the page and began to read, this book is thin.

It could not possibly take long to finish.


	11. Guidelines

The book took fourteen hours to finish.

They were hours which passed by rather quickly, and admittedly were rather amusing and worth their passing, Rose had found, but the time spent was by no means as short as she had originally believed the narrow little rulebook in her hands would be.

This, she found additionally, was especially surprising when one took into account the generally large font used for each page -- or at least, large in comparison to the average font size one might put in a book as thin as this one -- as well as the frequently occasional images which nearly seemed to make the thing into a children's picture book instead of any official collection of magical legal advice.

Which was another characteristic Rose found: most of the book had been written in a lighthearted style which conveyed, almost whimsically, what a particular magical creature _should_ or _should not_ do, rather than anything authoritative such as what they _can_ or _cannot_ do. Much of what the book had to say was given as friendly advice instead of any truly hard warning, which made it difficult for her to take very much of it especially seriously.

For example, in the section regarding sirens, it was advised that they not lead a human of any sort directly to an abrupt death -- that, at worst, they only leave them stranded up against a rock, or a tree or similar if on land instead of sea, and then immediately leave to let them fend for themselves. Polite and practical suggestions for the use of their powers included strengthening personal bonds, by presenting a human with a sort of temptation, sans free will-demolishing magic, and allowing the tempted human to take an objective look at their life so that they might remain loyal and true to whatever it was they were being tempted against.

It was thoroughly odd, Rose found, and this is exactly why, barring outside interruptions, the book managed to enamor her for so long.

The overall lack of interruptions itself was due in no small part to Rose's significant lack of most mortal bodily needs, but the bigger contributor to her reading marathon remaining uninterrupted was the general absence of both Dave and Nepeta. They had dutifully remained locked in their duel, unable to bother Rose so long as they had each other to contend with, and this had given Rose a rather pleasant atmosphere of peace and quiet to read in.

One might make the misguided assumption that if the two of them had successfully been fighting with one another for fourteen hours, they could easily continue their fight indefinitely. They certainly had the stamina to do so, an important difference between them and most other magical species, but neither had the attention span to fight for much longer than a week, in the absolute best-case scenario.

They had made good use of their fourteen hours by thoroughly mucking up the bathroom, splashing water and bubbling cleansing products every which way and, in Dave's case significantly moreso than Nepeta's, directly altering the bathroom in a number of combative ways, including the drastic increase of the water's volume, and temporarily granting the water the consistency of stiff gelatin. When that got old, and she was finally able to breach the surface of the gelatin water to escape at about six hours in, Nepeta had the bold idea to not only exit the bathroom, but also run to the room dedicated to being a jungle. There, even though Dave had arrived first to lay a dastardly trap, she was even more in her element than in the bathroom.

Skinwalkers are, after all, masters of animalian combat in virtually any environment that a vicious animal can be found in -- which is not to say that a bathroom is such an environment, so much as oceans and lakes and rivers more or less are, and a bathroom such as the one Rose had had built was close enough.

In this same vein, the casual observer may be surprised to know that Dave was not a worthy competitor for Nepeta in direct animal-to-animal combat. Genies could easily replicate any form a skinwalker might take on, and without having to first personally kill the animal they wanted to become, but they scarcely had the dedication to train in any particular form for very long, let alone make use of that form all by itself. It is in fact rather skull-poundingly boring for a genie to stick for very long with a single gimmick, such as keeping themselves confined to one animal form, and this is exactly why Dave kept occasionally changing which animal he was parading around as, and transforming a new section of the jungle floor to quicksand every half hour.

"Y'know, you've been at this for a while," an oddly red elephant wearing absurdly oversized sunglasses said at about the eleventh hour, when everything had wound down somewhat. It steadily stomped along through the jungle in a perfectly straight line, which meant that it pushed through a fair number of trees, toppling them over with massive resounding cracks, but the elephant seemed not to notice. "You really are determined to beat me, aren't you?"

No response came, and so the elephant continued, courteously picking up the verbal slack. "Just so you know, it's perfectly okay to concede defeat to a stronger opponent. There's no shame in acknowledging your own personal shortcomings. Plus I think that's actually an important step to becoming a better person or something."

Again, there was no response, although it would have been difficult to hear one anyway, given the constant heedless knocking over of enormous trees.

"I know where you are, by the way. I'm just walking in a line so I can clear a nice path for myself. I'll show you when it's done."

Several long moments of silence -- or rather, massive amounts of noise, as mammoth tree trunks snapped and crashed to the ground -- passed without incident.

Finally, an attack was made. A lone bird flying far, far above the trees began to convulse and grow horrifyingly in size, dropping abruptly as it did so, until a rhinoceros was plummeting down towards the elephant, horn first.

"Took you long enough," said the elephant simply, before stopping and resting its trunk on one of the trees it had just knocked over, as if ready to accept its fate in atonement for its deforestation sins.

The rhino steadily approached at increasingly greater velocities from increasingly lesser distances. It managed to exceed the speed of a typical passenger train in its dive, and did not seem the slightest bit worried about how quickly it was approaching the ground, never mind the elephant in its way.

At about twenty meters and less than a second from impact, the elephant lifted the tree it had been resting its trunk upon, and effortlessly batted the falling rhinoceros directly down the cleared path of jungle behind it. The elephant thoroughly ignored how impossible this should have been with the actual strength of its trunk, never mind the absolutely terrible grip it exerted on the tree, and the rhinoceros must not have been in a good position to call the elephant out on this, because it was still flying backwards through the mostly unoccupied section of the jungle which the elephant had just finished casually smashing itself through.

"And he hits an _amazing_ home run!" The elephant cheered without an ecstatically cheery voice.  "The crowd goes absolutely wild!" A tinny mockup of thousands of voices cheering for nothing in particular played in the distance, and the elephant chuckled to itself as it carved a short half-circle from its end of the line, until it was moving parallel to the first line, at which point it went straight again.

Within a few seconds, no more than, say, twenty, a jaguar which recently came into existence after a rhinoceros simultaneously exited existence leapt at the elephant from the nearby underbrush, claws extended and a vicious growl marking its presence only after it had already jumped. The elephant regarded it as a housecat might regard a familiar human -- which is to say, it ignored the jaguar entirely.

With a soft smack, the jaguar hit the elephant's side, its claws sinking into the wrinkled hide and keeping it held there. The elephant yawned boredly. "Shit," it said on the tail of the yawn, "you really are a clingy one, aren't you?"

The jaguar ripped a fresh slash across the elephant's side in response.

"Clingy and cranky. Yeesh." The elephant yawned again, still walking along and trampling the local flora as the jaguar kept creating bloody streaks on the elephant, only attacking with one paw at a time so as to keep itself attached with the other three.

After some time, the jaguar decided its scrapes were not very effective or entertaining, and clambered up onto the back of the elephant. It crept up to the head, and swiftly raised a forepaw, claws extended. The paw then came down just as fast, its owner deciding against unnecessary flair; it aimed for the sunglasses.

The paw could scarcely move a fourth of a meter before it was halted by the tip of the elephants trunk, which shot up at absurd speeds to stop it. "Please do not touch the shades."

The jaguar defiantly growled in response, raked its claws across the trunk's end, and swung its other forepaw towards the sunglasses. It, too, was stopped by an unnaturally quick snaky winding of the trunk. "Hey," said the elephant, and had to use its trunk to bat away a third attempt. "Hey!" it snapped a moment later, even louder. "Quit it. Quit it! Paws off the shades!"

Despite being halted in every attempt, the jaguar continued striking at the sunglasses, until it was abruptly rushed by the entire trunk, and tightly wrapped up in it. Fiercely, the jaguar bit and kicked and swiped its claws at the offending appendage, which seemed far too long for how much it wrapped around the jaguar, while the elephant brought it all around to bear just in front of its face. "Would you knock that off?"

The jaguar swept an errant claw towards the sunglasses again, and the elephant shook the jaguar as it held it out a little further. "Not the sunglasses, jackass; knock off the stupid attempts."

More scratching and struggling occurred, until the jaguar seemed for the first time to acknowledge the fact that an elephant's trunk was holding it in the air. It growled a fluctuating, low growl at the elephant.

"What?" the elephant asked, pausing in its destructive stride.

Another growl sounded, at which point the jaguar began to shift forms. Nepeta's body soon replaced it. "Dave!" she shouted, crossing her arms and scowling at him.

"What," Dave said again, but forgot to pose it as a question this time.

"You've been cheating, haven't you?"

Dave blinked. His sunglasses negated the effect. "Have I?" The question was, strangely enough, a genuine one.

"You're using magic!"

Another blink, which was effectively just a pause in conversation. "...Nepeta, I dunno if you're aware," he responded in slow, condescending tones, "but you have _also_ been using magic. 'S kinda how we turn into animals, right? It happens like magic because it literally _is_ magic, get it?"

"Ugh," Nepeta said, exasperated, and shook her head. "Not like that, you asshole. You were elongating your trunk. You still are!" She prodded angrily at the fleshy snout surrounding her torso, inadvertently jabbing a finger right into a deep bloody cut she had caused only moments earlier.

"Oh, that," Dave said, nodding, and still not showing any signs of pain. "Yeah, I did do that. Is that against the rules now?"

"Dave, the whole point of this is to not use any magic outside of trans-fur-mations!"

"Hey, makin' my schnoz longer is totally a transformation."

A frustrated, rage-filled sigh escaped Nepeta, and she pounded a fist down on the elephant's trunk, inadvertently splattering some more blood on herself. "I'm talking about natural trans-fur-mations! Like turning into animals!"

Idly, Dave scratched the side of his face with one of his feet. "Okay," he said, nodding in comprehension, "altering the physical shape of an animal body is against the rules, apparently. But what about using magic that prevents you from taking any injuries? I seem to recall whacking your rhino ass with _exactly_ one hundred thousand Newtons of force using a tree trunk; you weren't even winded."

Nepeta took on a flushed, guilty look. "That's not the same," she said, futilely. Not even her voice was convinced of it.

"Yeah, yeah, you dirty little hypocrite; sure it isn't. By the way, are you cold? I ask only because you're naked."

"What?" Nepeta looked down for the first time since entering her natural form, and noticed both the blood on her bare skin, and her bare skin. Before now, she had not been in her natural form since originally starting this fight, which meant that she had never gotten dressed after she had finished bathing. Moments later, a second revelation came to her: her clothes were probably in a sopping wet heap in the bathroom, all of it thoroughly soaked by the water which had been splashed absolutely everywhere.

"Yeah. Thought you should know. I forgive you, but that kind of indecent exposure is pretty reckless. There could be children in this pocket dimension."

Nepeta ignored him, instead attempting to worm her way out of his grip, and then giving him a flat look when she was not released. "Dave."

"What?"

"Let me go."

"Why?"

"Be-claws I need to go find my clothes!"

"Well, 'need' is pretty subjective," Dave said, raising a forefoot and swirling it around. "But if you 'need' them so badly, then why can't you spare the effort to get outta my trunk? C'mon, Neps; don't get lazy on me now. Fight for your right to not wear your birthday suit!"

Nepeta growled again, despite not being in an animal form, although she quickly took one on. Rapidly, she morphed into something generally larger in Dave's grip, until he could no longer hold her. Her new shape turned out to be that of another elephant, roughly the same size as Dave.

"Pft. Lame," Dave said. "You fuckin' copycat. Or I guess, copy-phant."

Nepeta ignored the comments, and instead knocked her tusks against Dave's. He did not budge.

"What'cha doin'?" he asked, voice bubbling with innocent curiosity.

More tusk knocking followed, and then a sudden hitch as Dave began to slide backwards.

"Whoa-hoa, hey! You've been working out. You must _really_ want those clothes. Notice I said 'want,' not 'need.' It's kind of impetuous, right? I'm just a real piece a' shit like that."

Nepeta still said nothing, did not even grunt; she simply continued pushing him down the path he had cleared.

"Alright, well, this has been fun, but you're moving me away from the next stroke of my masterpiece and I can't have that. Hup," Dave said with a grunt of minimal effort, and planted his feet firmly in the ground. Nepeta halted against him immediately, and before she could double down on her efforts, she found herself lifted into the air as Dave masterfully locked his tusks with hers. Slowly at first, she rose up, and considered shifting forms, but Dave sped her up and backwards and, with masterful grace, performed a full elephantal suplex.

Nepeta struggled vainly to escape, and was smashed backwards and upside-down into the ground for her efforts. "Yoink," Dave said, slipping his tusks out from in-between hers, which he should not have had the leverage to do, nor the flexibility, but he carelessly did it anyway. He was off his back and walking down towards where he stopped stomping through the jungle in mere seconds.

When he continued stomping along his straight line, however, Nepeta did not pursue him. She merely shifted into a bird, oriented herself correctly, and flew off for the door.

At hour twelve, when she returned, Nepeta was immediately scooped up in Dave's magical influence and flung quite quickly into the air.

"Hi," Dave said pleasantly, back to his human appearance as he moved in to float along beside her. He was dressed now in a red Hawaiian shirt, tan cargo shorts, and black sandals, with a camera slung around his neck by a strap, and a flat-rimmed straw hat on his head. His sunglasses actually looked totally in-place for a change.

"Where are we going?" Nepeta asked, still in her own natural form, and wearing different clothes from the ones she went out to retrieve, these a simple short-sleeved white blouse with light blue jeans and, by surprising coincidence, also black sandals. Her other clothes were hung up in her room to dry; the ones she was wearing now were from one of her skins, a house cat in fact, which she had dedicated to holding a number of clothing items for such an inconvenience as this one. A skinwalker's influence was not infinite in what it could bring along with it, but it was enough to keep five or so changes of spare clothing huddled around a single feline.

"Up," Dave said helpfully.

"I can see that," Nepeta responded dryly, crossing her arms as they soared. "Up where? And why?"

"Up into the sky, and because I wanted to show you the artistic genius I was crafting by clearing that path down there."

"A penis," she said, nearly interrupting him in how quickly and flatly she said it. She closed her eyes and sighed.

Dave frowned. "You didn't even look at it!"

"I don't have to. If it's you and it's 'art,' it's a penis."

There was a brief pause. "Have I really gotten that predictable?" Dave quietly mused aloud.

"Gotten?" Nepeta asked, incredulous. She opened her eyes to stare at Dave. "Mew've always done this! I don't doubt fur a second that you obsessively made penises even be-fur we met! It sure as heck wasn't a change you made upon meeting me!"

Dave thought about that, and shrugged. "You could at least look at my latest artistic endeavor before so fuckin' crassly judging it. Maybe you'd even be surprised; it is, after all, not _actually_ a penis."

Nepeta had a difficult time believing this, but she humored him, and looked down. To Dave's credit, it was not a penis.

It was multiple penises.

"Beautiful, ain't it?" Dave said proudly, gesturing broadly at the imprints of his earlier destruction.

"So that's why you kept putting quicksand down o-fur there," Nepeta said to herself, as she realized that each of the penises was ejaculating.

"Well, that, and there's also something really satisfying about turning the ground underneath you into a sinkhole."

"Mmhm," Nepeta said unenthusiastically. Cleverly, while Dave was still looking down to admire his handiwork, Nepeta turned herself into a six meter-long brown and green snake. Gallantly, Dave pretended not to notice.

When the snake lunged for Dave, he made sure to intentionally totally-by-accident release his magical grip, and allowed the snake to begin plummeting like a sad rope. The snake took this development in stride, however, and dove headfirst into the thick expanse of plantlife below.

"You can't escape change!" Dave called down to the jungle. He waited a few moments. "Am I supposed to chase you yet?" he added. No response came, not even a rude hiss. Dave shrugged. "I'll just take the initiative, I guess."

He then turned himself into a large red bulldozer and plummeted down after the snake.

For the sake of not expositing upon the interactions of a bulldozer bent on pursuing a snake and knocking down half an artificial jungle in the process, this story will now jump back to Rose, about two relative hours in the future.

That is to say, the story will resume exactly where it left off at the very beginning of this chapter.

Rose, now out of reading material, was at a small loss as to what she should do.

The obvious answer was to summon Dave and make a few new wishes, now that she knew all about how magic worked, _and_ what genies were and were not allowed to do, both in terms of wishes and in terms of generally being mischievous bastards, but Rose found that this very obvious answer seemed somehow inappropriate. For the most part, after all the time she had spent feeling perfectly fine, Rose felt as though she should feel hungry, a feeling which was doing its damnedest to give her something to feel about in lieu of actually feeling any amount of hunger whatsoever.

Maybe she would go eat a sandwich, for the hell of it. Just something to do while she mulled all this over. Dave obviously wanted her to make all of her wishes already and just get them over with, but that was all the more reason for her not to go about this very quickly at all.

Yes, a sandwich would consume some time for her rather nicely.

As she walked to the kitchen, it occurred to Rose that she would need to make a sandwich before she could eat one, but that was good, because it gave her exponentially more of an opportunity to waste time.

Rose summoned the fridge where it belonged next to the counter and opened it. She surveyed the available ingredients.

Meat. Cheese. Mustard. Mayonnaise. Ketchup. Ranch dressing. Steak sauce. ...There were far more condiments in here than she felt were in any way practical. Obviously, this was Dave's doing, and given that it was Rose's fault for never stocking this thing with her own preferred food items, she had nothing to be upset about.

She decided the meat and cheese were enough, and that, so long as food and its nutritional values were no longer strictly relevant to her, besides the fact that she had never tried putting one on a sandwich, she might as well grab the mango sitting on the third shelf, too.

The cheese and mango were exactly what Rose had been expecting, the former some uncut Swiss and the latter displaying a ripe firmness, but upon closer inspection, Rose found that the meat was not ham, as she originally foolishly believed, but in fact buffalo. The packaging said so, and Rose was not in a position to question printed plastic found in a magical refrigerator.

After some deliberation, Rose supposed that, if nothing else, trying something new like buffalo meat could give her some sense of accomplishment to making this sandwich, and there was no harm in using what she had.

Oh, Rose thought with a start, I'll need bread. There was no bread in the fridge, but there was a bread box on the counter. (At least, there was now that she wanted one to be there.)

She had several different bread boxes to choose from, and chose the one with Rye bread. Rose had never eaten Rye bread before, even though it had always seemed like the sort of bread she might like, and ultimately it was just one of those small idle fantasies she had never put much time or effort into seeing to reality -- until now.

The loaf of Rye bread looked as though it had originally been a wide, rounded circular tube, and had then deflated on its side until it sagged, although to Rose's knowledge this was what Rye bread was supposed to look like, so no complaints there. It was pre-cut, and she took two slices from the end, subtly proving herself not to be one of those types of people who avoids end pieces like any form of plague. She neatly twisted the loaf's wrapping up along the end and tucked it under itself, and pushed the whole back into the bread box, where it disappeared again.

Knife, Rose thought suddenly, a knife would come in handy, too. The cheese had to be cut, references to flatulence notwithstanding, and the buffalo meat would probably be easier to work with in slices rather than just a large slab.

Do people really just _buy_ slabs of buffalo meat like this? It was something to think about while she imagined a drawer in the counter, and then opened the drawer that appeared so she could search for a knife. She found one quickly, because it was not difficult to find a knife in a drawer which had come into existence for the express purpose of giving her a selection of knives to choose from.

Better question: do people really _sell_ this sort of thing? They must, Rose thought, if it exists, but does it actually exist? What if Dave created this himself for the sole purpose of putting it in the fridge? That would be even harder to explain, Rose felt, because if nothing else it seemed difficult to conjure meat and assign it a specific animal of origin when it had not actually come from that animal so much as it had from magical nothingness. Her only reasonable guess concerning this was that the meat would have to be created with DNA if it were to simulate real meat, and that DNA could easily be a copy from the most generic buffalo alive, or at least the records of one such buffalo.

Ultimately, Rose stopped questioning these things, because they were getting her nowhere and she had been standing in the middle of her kitchen for about a minute now, doing fuckall for actually making a sandwich while considering the logistics of magically-produced buffalo meat.

She took the knife to the meat and gave herself three nice thin slices. A sink appeared in the counter at her behest, and she rinsed the knife off before bringing it to the cheese. Two slices were enough, she decided, and rinsed the knife off again before putting the meat and cheese back in the fridge.

Oh, the mango.

Rose had just finished artfully positioning two slices of meat and one slice of cheese on a slice of Rye bread when she remembered the mango, sitting quietly on the counter.

Do mangoes have seeds? Rose could not seem to remember, and brought the knife to the mango's center to check.

Mangoes _do_ have seeds. Big ones.

A few sharp twists across the center more-or-less halved the mango around the seed, which she then fumbled with for some time as she tried to cut around it on the opposing side. Trying to pry it out with her knife proved a fruitless attempt, and the juicy fruit only got more and more slippery as its open areas squished and dribbled in her hands.

It occurred to Rose that this was about the most exciting thing she had done all day, even with the acknowledgement of how totally subjective time was in these dimensions. Some of Dave's educational displays had been especially fantastical, and a few were actually worth Rose's enthusiasm and excitement, but they were something Dave did, not Rose. It is not, on the whole, very exciting to simply watch something, and watching was all Rose had really done there.

The mango proved a little difficult to slice evenly, and Rose's attempts yielded blobby chunks that were thick in the middle and flat on the edges. They dripped. Rose frowned as she put a few chunks on the half-assembled sandwich and they all dribbled, making the bread slightly soggy. Oh, well. 'Tis the price of making a previously-untested experimental sandwich.

Finally, it was done. Two slices of Rye bread, three slices of buffalo meat, two slices of Swiss cheese, and five odd little bits of mango fruit, all sitting neatly together in a stack on the counter.

Rose decided to take a stock of their order before attempting to eat it. The order went, from top to bottom: Rye bread(the end piece), buffalo meat, Swiss cheese, mango chunk(x2), buffalo meat, mango chunk(x3), Swiss cheese, buffalo meat, Rye bread.

It was as symmetrical as she could get it without adding another mango chunk or meticulously arranging them so that their mass was the same on both sides of the middle slice of buffalo meat.

Rose took it all in, and rediscovered the fact that she was not hungry. This was to be expected, but the feeling seemed to intensify itself in the direction of not being hungry at all, and in fact being quite full and alright without any of that "food" sitting there on the counter sliding down any esophagi to enter any stomachs, thank you very much.

She couldn't blame her feelings, or their negativity, but it would have been a shame to let this monstrosity go to waste, so she gave it a small nibble.

Objectively speaking, it was terrible.

Sentimentally speaking, it was pretty okay.

In terms of being a culinary experiment, it had been a hugely educational success, and did not at all require a repeat.

Overall, Rose wound up spitting out a saliva-coated gob of unappealing vaguely-edible stuff into a trashcan, which appeared conveniently by the counter. The rest of the sandwich bravely followed.

Well, that was productive, Rose tried to think to herself, and then shook her head as she began to softly giggle. No, even she could not lie so brazenly, especially not to herself; that was one of the most pathetic sandwiches she had ever made. Not that she made many sandwiches in her life, but at least when she made every sandwich preceding this one, she had a functional stomach to collaborate with her taste buds and brain and tell her to carefully consider what the fuck it was that she thought she was doing whenever she started putting slices of mango in with buffalo meat and Swiss cheese.

At least the Rye had been alright.

Okay, thought Rose, perhaps it is for the better that I not personally avoid making wishes like this, lest half the kitchen end up haphazardly cobbled together, and subsequently fed to the trashcan. She giggled again and, with a renewed sense of knowing what it was that she wanted out of life (and out of Dave), she headed upstairs.

Rose knocked on the bathroom first, in case Nepeta was for any reason still in there. Upon opening it, an inch of water rushed past, instantly soaking her feet in their comfortable shoes. Rose frowned. The bathroom was not originally designed to be able to flood itself. "Goddammit, Dave."

No one appeared to be in the bathroom, which Rose did not spend enough time looking inside to realize was because the mist had disappeared, and so Rose closed the door again and trudged along in the sopping carpet to check Dave's room. It was empty, save for the light, and featured a nice painting of a "quantum" hole directly on the wall. Rose closed the door and briefly wondered why she thought he would have returned there.

Nepeta's room was equally devoid of people, as was (thankfully) her own, and it left her to wonder where they could have possibly gone.

Feline play room?

No.

Anti-gravity room?

No.

Jungle room?

No.

...Wait a minute.

Rose had nearly missed it, having not been in the jungle since its creation, but upon closer inspection, she found that half of it had been crumpled in a scattered heap along the ground. There also appeared to be sounds of heavy machinery in the distance, which were her only indication that someone was still in here. Presumably, at least one of those someones was Dave.

"Dave," Rose called aloud, somewhat pathetically. No response came. "Dave!" she said more sharply. Still nothing.

She did not particularly want to, but Rose decided to step further into the jungle.

Her travels lasted for twenty steps, at which point she hit the quicksand Dave had put in here just before Nepeta entered for the first time.

"Oh, fuck," said Rose as she stumbled, and upon gaining her balance, found her ankles submerged in the earth, and sinking. "Dave," she began to call again, and then paused. No, no, she had read about this; not quicksand, but about genies. Among all the entertaining-but-practically-useless information she had gone over in several hours of reading, there had been rules for genies, and Rose remembered them. One bit had the exceptionally handy rule that, if someone to whom a genie owed wishes made a wish, the genie was obligated to grant that wish. A footnote regarding this rule mentioned that it is easiest to grant wishes from within a short distance of whoever a genie is granting wishes for, and advised that genies stop whatever it is they are doing and check up on their humans whenever one makes a wish, if they are not already in the immediate vicinity.

Rose took a calming breath as her ankles dipped into the ground. "Dave, I wish to be out of this quicksand -- with my clothes!"

Her voice had not been any louder than her initials attempts, but about seven hundred meters away, gently rampaging through a section of the jungle it had not yet covered, a red bulldozer stopped in its tracks. Bushes in front of it rustled with curiosity as the animal hiding within watched. Abruptly, the bulldozer disappeared; one moment there, the next moment not.

Dave simultaneously appeared hovering above Rose, snapped his fingers, and frowned. "Did you seriously just wish to be removed from quicksand? When you can _fly?_ "

"I wanted to find you," said Rose in a smooth dodge as she turned around to look at Dave, now that she was standing on firm ground. "Making a wish seemed the easiest way to get your attention."

"So you dipped yourself into quicksand?" Rose shrugged innocently. "Well, that was fucking stupid and pointless of you. But hey: you found me. Good job; d'y'want a sticker? I've got shiny gold stars and a bunch of pictures of food." Dave produced small cut-out images of both as he spoke about them.

"No thank you, Dave; I would actually prefer to make another wish. After some deep reading, lengthy contemplation, a bit of ruminating on what you taught me, and a sandwich, I have firmly reached a wish-making decision."

Dave bobbed in the air for a moment, looking on as he put away his stickers. "And that totally-brilliant-I'm-sure decision would be...?"

"To visit a bank."

There is something to be said about how difficult it is to convey incredulity with a pair of sunglasses obscuring one's face.

There is, in an equal amount, also something to be said about how well Dave could do it.

He did it.

"Rose, you're fucking amazing," Dave said, clapping slowly. "You don't wish for an ATM, or a checkbook, or even for money to just be deposited into some account of yours -- or in fact just physically given to you! No, no no no, while in command of a genie who has virtually limitless magical potential at his fingertips what you wish for is to _go to a goddamned bank._ I am fucking impressed. Bravo."

"You know, Dave, you might be a tad less irritable about the wish if you knew why I was wishing for it."

"Okay. I'll fucking humor you: why do you wanna go to a bank?"

"I am going to rob it."

A moment passed as Dave thought about that, and considered whether Rose was being serious. As far as he could tell -- and he was capable of magical lie detection -- she was.

"Alright," he said simply. "So instead of wishing for money you're wishing for the means to take it yourself, in one of the most dangerous and difficult ways of doing it. Am I wrong there?"

"Not totally."

"Then in a nutshell you're still a fucking idiot. Lucky for you though," Dave said while pointing a finger at Rose, grinning, "granting stupid wishes is my life, and without it I would have nothing. So go right the fuck ahead; I am in complete support of this idea and will probably bring some popcorn along for the ride."

"Superb," said Rose, however before she could properly make her wish, she noticed something rapidly approaching from behind Dave. A loud feline roar accompanied the sight, as what appeared to be a cheetah sped towards them. At a sufficient distance, it leapt.

"Um," was as far as Rose got before it tackled her to the ground, thankfully not using its claws, at which point it stared her in the face.

About five seconds passed, and then Rose was staring into the voluminous green eyes of her friend, Nepeta. "Are mew going somewhere new?"

"Well," started Rose, doing her best not to make a fuss about the way Nepeta was positioned on top of her, "I was planning on paying a visit to a bank, yes."

"She wants to rob it," Dave added helpfully. Rose shot him a sharp look.

"Oh. That sounds fun!" Nepeta grinned madly as she said this. Rose blinked, and was surprised to find that Nepeta's opinion matched hers entirely on the matter.

"Doesn't it?" said Dave, chuckling. "I bet it'll be a fuckin' blast. Hey Rose, tell you what: you wish to go to a bank, and I'll even take you there with your clothes. Nepeta's too, if she wants to go."

Rose looked from Dave back to Nepeta, who had tempered her grin down to a smile. "Do you?"

"Well... if you'll have me," responded Nepeta, tentative.

"Of course! So long as you're alright with, er... robbing a bank. I suppose you could stand off to the side if you'd rather--"

"No," said Nepeta, a little more adamant than Rose had been expecting. "I'll join you. Really, it's the kind of reckless, illegal, and super-dangerous thing that anyone craving some action in their life will fantasize about."

Rose smiled. "Wouldn't you know it, I've always maintained the same opinion of the idea."

"You two make a cute couple," said Dave, clasping his hands together and looking ready to start cooing. "Still, if we could just go ahead and get this Bonnie-and-Bonnie bank-robbing show on the road...?"

"Alright. Dave, I wish for you to take both myself and Nepeta here to the bank closest to my apartment, preferably someplace discreet nearby where no one will see us, such as an unoccupied bathroom."

"Discreet; got it," said Dave, and before anyone could begin to feel worried, he whisked them away with a snap of his fingers.


	12. Bank

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER: This chapter was written by someone who knows next to nothing about: financial establishments; law enforcement; ostentatious firearms; large waste-disposal bins; and several isolated sections of the color spectrum. Further, not all of the previous statement is true; please feel free to work out which bits are false at your own leisure, and then keep the information you derive in mind when criticizing the inevitable inaccuracies to follow.

Darkness.

That is to say, Rose suddenly found herself thoroughly surrounded by the stuff, among other environmental descriptors which will be expounded upon shortly, and it occurred to her here that while she might very quickly grow tired of Dave's shenanigans, he could very well continue shoveling his personal brand of horseshit her way without reprieve for the remainder of her natural lifespan, and possibly longer. Some expedience, she began to realize, might suit her better than her previous approach of taking her time and, in attempting to bore Dave, simply winding up with more horseshit shoveled her way.

And if this truly was her next lesson to learn in dealing with her genie, then she had some restrategizing to do -- which she decided to get a start on immediately.

"You know what, Dave?" Rose asked calmly, sitting as complacently as she could in the dark while Nepeta still lay atop her. "I am not even angry. You technically listened, and that is not something I can rightfully be angry about, so I will very reasonably choose not to be angry about it."

"Glad you see things my way for a change," said Dave, his voice slightly muffled to Rose's ears. She knew why, and was choosing very specifically not to be angry about it.

"Rose, it smells," complained Nepeta, shuffling on top of her, and probably trying to escape. Rose did not blame her.

"Yes," confirmed Rose, "yes, it absolutely does. Dave, would you mind opening the lid?"

"Uh, I dunno Rose," Dave said in a mockery of panic, "that doesn't sound very discreet."

"Dave, you are a centuries-old genie who has had his entire life to practice his magic; I'm sure you can make it work."

"Eh... okay okay; you're right. I am totally and undeniably capable of doing this discreetly." There was a brief pause, after which light began to filter through a growing gap in the darkness as Dave slowly, and agonizingly squeakily, lifted the lid to the dumpster Nepeta and Rose were sitting in. It ascended in the powerful, invisible grip of his magic, and needless to say the display was less than inconspicuous. Thankfully, no one was in the immediate vicinity to see or hear it.

"Voila," Dave said once the lid was fully open, "one free-of-charge totally-discreet lid-lift, for the two lovely ladies sittin' in garbage."

"Yes, and a very hearty 'go fuck yourself' to you, too, Dave." Rose waited patiently as Nepeta clambered up and over the edge of the giant metal bin, after which she carefully followed. Rose was not quite as spry or agile as Nepeta, but she could still levitate, and with some focus she managed to levitate herself out of the dumpster, orient herself upright, and land gracelessly on the ground beside it. "Ew," she said, distinctly feeling something wet on her back, and not in a sufficiently inquisitive mood to find out what. "I wish to be clean of everything that was in that dumpster prior to my arrival in it."

Dave frowned, and snapped his fingers; at once, all the fresh stains and sticky residues that had gotten on Rose's skin, hair, and clothing entirely vanished. "And here I thought you might enjoy a little culture. Tons of it with the bacteria you can find in these things, you know." Dave rapped sharply on the side of the dumpster for emphasis.

"That's nice," said Rose in an unconvincing tone, and poked her head out of the narrow alleyway they were standing in.

They were, in fact, just outside a bank, and further they were currently in the space between a bank and a privately-owned sandwich shop. High above the alleyway, a few stray clouds made a sunny day into a slightly-less-sunny day. On the road before the alleyway, cars sporadically whooshed by, producing just enough of a threat to discourage jaywalking. Several passersby hurried up and down the chipped sidewalks on both sides of the street, and all of them looked like they wanted to be somewhere else. Business as usual in the big city.

There was a cough which drew Rose's attention back to the alley's interior, as a soft breeze picked up the foul stench wafting from the dumpster and caused Nepeta's nose to wrinkle. She pinched at her nostrils. "Can we go inside yet?" she asked, trying not to sound irritable.

"Mm... no, sorry, not yet," Rose decided, ducking back into the alleyway. "We need a plan. _I_ need a plan, anyway."

"What's there to plan?" Dave asked easily. "Nobody in the bank can see or hear you. Just walk in, grab all the money you want, and walk out."

"Dave, I do sincerely hope you realize that robbing a bank is much more complicated than that."

"Oh shit," said Dave, raising his hands, "look out everyone. We got some _sass_ comin' out of the girl who's never even fuckin' robbed a bank before. This girl must be packing some serious heat because she  _clearly_ knows more about bank-robbing than the magical powerhouse of a genie she's keepin' slaved up in her company; I bet she's got _mad_ plans for pullin' off the heist of the goddamned _century_ here 'n' today."

" _In any case_ ," Rose said defiantly, before Dave could launch himself into any more of a rant, "I'm here to rob this bank _my_ way, Dave, not your way. Following that, it's important to keep in mind that I'm not actually doing this for the money; I'm doing it because, in a vaguely psychotic sort of way, it sounds fun. And, following  _that_ , I feel as though it would be much more fun my way than yours, because I intend to make this whole affair as needlessly dramatic as possible."

"Oh really?" Dave asked, and looked ready to chuckle, but abruptly stopped himself. "Dramatic..." he said, considering the word. He seemed to swish it around in his mouth, prodding and inspecting it with his tongue, before spitting out, "That's a bold claim, Lalonde. But hey -- you know what they say about actions and words, and which of the two speak louder."

"True enough, but before we perform any serious actions, I would like to stick with words only, so we all know exactly _which_ actions we will be doing, and when."

"Actually that reminds me, concerning your 'we,' is that a 'Rose-n-Nepeta we' or is that a 'Rose-Nepeta-n-Dave we'? Am I a part of this heist too?"

Rose scrunched up her face, and subconsciously tried to convey the fact that she did not at all want Dave to be a part of this. "You probably will be," she admitted, somewhat internally defeated. "You will, if nothing else, be an accomplice during this officially-unofficial planning meeting that we are more-or-less having right now."

"Mm, right, right," said Dave, nodding as he pulled out a small notepad and flipped through several pages. "I'm guessing I'm on supplies duty by default then," he continued, producing a pen and idly tapping it against his chin. "So what do you want?"

"Hm. Good question." Rose began to pace slowly back and forth. "To start with," she said, keeping her attention on Dave, "I'll probably need an intimidating-looking gun. Preferably one which fires real bullets, and is light enough for me to hold without becoming inconvenienced by its weight."

"Mhm," said Dave, and dutifully scribbled on the notepad. "Alright; and what else?"

"Disguises would be helpful. So, masks. Nepeta, what kind of mask would you like?"

"Huh? Oh," said Nepeta, brought out of her mental pursuits to block out the dumpster's scent. She was standing against the edge of the alleyway, breathing deeply in the space where it opened up onto the sidewalk. "I won't need a mask. I'll just do e-fur-ything in animal form. Maybe... a lioness. Something paw-erful and intimidating."

"Fair," Rose admitted, nodding. "You could still have a mask, though. It would make us much more recognizable as partners in crime."

"Oh, of course! I'll think about it." Nepeta flashed Rose a small smile, and resumed taking deep breaths at the edge of the alleyway.

"Alright. Um..." Rose rubbed her chin. "...a duffel bag to carry all the money I expect to get from the bank tellers could help. It might convince them that I'm actually trying to rob the place, rather than just create a scene."

"Only one?" Dave asked, looking up from his notepad.

"Mm... no, actually; three or four would do us better. Nepeta, how many bags do you think you can carry?"

"As many as will fit on my back!" She sounded proud.

"You could also," Dave said before anyone else could, "just get duffel bags that don't need to be carried."

Rose raised an eyebrow, skeptical, but moreover curious. "And how exactly would that work?"

"How _exactly_?" Dave thought about this for a moment.  "Magic."

Rose crossed her arms. "Dave."

"What? Magically levitating self-propelling duffel bags sound pretty fuckin' efficient to me."

It might not have been a proper answer, but Dave inadvertently gave Rose a better idea of what he meant. She considered it, and nodded not long after. "It wouldn't be inconspicuous, but at the same time I'm not trying to rob this bank inconspicuously; not in the slightest. I suppose those would work. Three or four of them, maybe five if you are so inclined."

"Hell yeah," Dave mumbled quietly, and resumed writing.

Rose watched him write, and kept her arms crossed as she thought. "Dave, can I see what you've written so far?"

He looked up sharply. "Why do you ask?"

"I want to check to see that you've been writing everything down, and writing it down correctly."

A lengthy pause came to pass as Rose waited patiently for Dave to show her the notepad, and Dave blatantly refused to give Rose a good viewing angle of the notepad.

"Okay," Dave said finally, "you caught me." He turned the notepad around, and Rose shook her head at what it displayed. "But if I don't practice my dick doodling as often as possible then how am I ever gonna improve? How can I ever hope to stop drawing massive cartoony schlongs and start drawing massive realistic schlongs? An artist has to hone his craft if he's ever gonna make a name for himself in the world, Rose. I have dreams too; don't crush my dreams."

"You've had plenty of time to realize your dreams before now," Rose said curtly, surprising Dave by a small, unnoticed margin, "and it's only your own fault for not seeing to them any faster." At this point, Rose hardly cared whether Dave was being serious; she had business to attend to and, regardless of its quality on any moral basis, she damn well intended to attend to it. "Now," she continued, snatching the notepad and pen out of Dave's hand, before tearing out the current page and starting on a new one. "From the top."

\---

Half an hour later, after Rose had gone through three pages of notepad paper and meticulously wished for all the items on her list, one by one, the "plan" was finally underway as Rose entered the bank.

She was smartly dressed now in a black suit, dress pants included, with a dark grey dress shirt and a slim purple tie both along for the ride. Her hair was primly styled for the occasion, short, neat, and altogether not actually diverging much from the norm other than that it now lacked a headband. Her violet irises were obscured marvelously well by a pair of sleek sunglasses, which curved neatly around her eyes, both lenses reaching from the bottom of her eyebrow to the top of her cheek. She kept her shoes, blissfully comfortable as they were, but had them colored a dull black to match the rest of her ensemble. For flair, she had a green corsage pinned to the left-middle of her suit jacket.

In the bank, which Rose entered via a propped-open metal and glass door, everything was blue. The carpet was blue; the walls and ceiling were a slightly lighter shade of blue; the small, open banking offices off to the left were a whole slew of differing blues; all of the visible bank employees wore blue business-casual attire; even the teller line and everything sitting on it showed some form of the color blue, and in one coffee mug's heretical case, the color orange as well. All that strictly lacked the color blue were the security cameras positioned around the room, of which there were many, and the thick glass along the teller line. The former was instead a dark gray; the latter was mostly transparent, and only had hints of blue in what faint reflections it displayed of the room around it.

The two employees visible behind the teller line, one male and one female, looked to be extraordinarily unoccupied by the three bank patrons in front of them, but were still casually giving them their attention in case someone began to wave money their way, or said something that might indicate their immediate departure. As for the patrons, two males and one female, all of them appeared middle-aged and thoroughly mild-mannered.

At the front of the line they had formed, the woman was writing on a small form at the teller line, instead of at any of the other flat surfaces available nearby which had been made for exactly this purpose; the two men were simply waiting behind her, one of them staring intently at his phone, while the other frowned deeply, wondering why the second employee was not currently available to help them, but also not brave enough to ask.

Rose noted, correctly it should be added, that none of them looked in the least bit threatening or excessively likely to put up a good fight. In other words, she very much had a good chance of pulling off a robbery here with great success.

Nobody really seemed to notice when Rose first walked in the bank, despite the horrendously pink gun she held, however this happened to be for a very good and entirely magical reason; soon, one by one, everyone became painfully aware of her presence, heads turning and stopping as they noticed other heads doing the same, before all focusing on the same thing. None of the bank's occupants dared to move as Rose stared them all down from its entrance, smiling gleefully, and they looked back with a small variety of shocked and fearful expressions.

"Hello," Rose said, calm but with just a hint of undeniable joy tinting her voice. "I bet you are all wondering why a woman is blocking the entrance to this bank with a neon-bubblegum Tommy gun. Hell, I bet some of you sharper folk already know, as it is rather simple: I am here to rob this bank. If you all comply, no one will get hurt, and believe me when I say that no one has to..." Rose trailed off, and paused, seemingly distracted by something in the air. No one else knew it, but she was currently looking at a genie floating above her, who was indicating to her through a series of meaningless gestures that someone was about to do something they were not supposed to.

That someone turned out to be the male bank teller, who was at this time slowly reaching for a small button hidden under his section of the teller line's counter.

Abruptly, Rose escaped her trance, and turned to point her gun at him. "Stop," she said, and the teller complied despite the presumably-bulletproof glass in front of him. Rose shook the gun menacingly at him, and he warily stepped away from the counter. "Hasn't anyone ever taught you any manners?" Rose asked, shaking her head very slightly in disapproval. "It is _incredibly_ rude to interrupt a girl whilst she is talking, especially by trying to push a silly little button that summons the police. Believe me, there will be plenty of time for officers of the law to join in on our fun, but later; as of this moment, I claim the stage for myself, and myself alone."

Her seemingly inescapable observational skills stymied both tellers from attempting to push any more buttons, and so Rose took a quick moment to calm herself, before she became too giddy or her grip on the gun began to shake. It was a rather light gun despite its size, similar in weight to a small twig, and this nearly made it more difficult to hold steady, as any small movement could move it drastically far; still, she managed, and after a rehabilitating pause which she felt was appropriately long, Rose spoke again. "For mutual convenience, would all of you kindly put down whatever you might be holding, and raise your hands?"

There was a prolonged silence as people hesitated, none wanting to make any sudden movements, but all realizing the greater potential danger in doing nothing. Eventually, everyone put down their personal belongings; the woman's pen, the man's phone, and even the bank teller's unfinished cup of coffee were all carefully set anywhere they could be. Everyone then raised their hands, given some coaxing from the terribly pink gun being waved at them, and Rose could not help but beam another smile as soon as ten different hands all stretched towards the ceiling.

"There we are," she said happily. "Now, I'm sure none of you want to stand around keeping your arms to the sky for an especially lengthy amount of time, so if you would please all line up against that wall there?" Rose momentarily directed her gun towards the east wall, to her right, which everyone seemed to be furthest from. "The sooner you do, the sooner we can get this over with."

Again, a ripple of hesitation and uncertainty spread among the small crowd, especially among the bank tellers. They seemed to be acutely aware of the fact that they could only reach the east wall by entering a door on the wall directly behind them, and exiting another some feet away; the room between those doors was the only connection between the teller line and the bulk of the bank's open floor.

"Ah, wait a moment," Rose said in correction as everyone slowly began to move. They all halted immediately. "I cannot leave any of you unsupervised, as that would be terribly reckless of me, but it is clear to me now that this presents a dilemma with you two behind the counter. But, fear not, brave hostages; I have come prepared for this sort of a hitch." Rose cleared her throat, and turned towards the open door she was still standing in front of. "Nepeta?"

Several long, tense moments passed as everyone stood still, five people raising their hands in fear of being sprayed with bullets by a sixth. Then they were given something entirely new to fear: a large female lion with a purple corsage tucked behind its ear, and a small but ornate black opera mask which failed entirely to hide its luminously green eyes.

The lioness wandered in lazily, but seemed to grin at everyone who looked; because none of the people raising their hands knew that the lion was actually a skinwalker, or that skinwalkers were a magical species which factually existed, they all found themselves very deeply disturbed and frightened by the sight. The man who had been looking at his phone nearly fainted.

"Nepeta, can you make sure everyone lines up against the wall without doing anything brash or irrational?"

The lioness meowed cheerfully, and it would have been absolutely adorable for all involved if not for the fact that half of the people in this building were being kept there against their will.

"Thank you," said Rose, no less cheery for using English words, before turning back to her captive audience. "I hope none of you will be foolish enough to defy my fine feline friend here, but I'll let you find out on your own what will happen should you prove demented enough to try." As the lioness sat itself down in front of the door, staring down the bank's occupants, Rose moved towards the back room; very simply, she walked past the terrified lined-up bank patrons and casually strolled through the door. The blue "Employees only" sign on it entirely failed to stop her.

Inside, Rose found a small break room. Neat and strangely-not-blue-but-instead-white tiling on the ground held up a small rectangular metal and wood table in its middle, along with a scattering of six identical metal chairs. A refrigerator, counter, sink, and microwave were all present in one corner, although they appeared to have been individually manufactured as far as a whole decade apart. More importantly, the walls (which were blue, to make up for all the bits in this room that were not) must have been relatively thick, or perhaps Rose had just not been loud enough, because two other bank employees were sitting at the table, both male, and the two of them looked rather surprised when she stepped inside.

"Oh, hello," Rose said vacantly, slightly surprised herself, and had to remember to point her gun at them. The two employees visibly stiffened when she did. "I'm terribly sorry about this; I didn't mean to interrupt your lunch, honest. It's just that I'm robbing you right now, and -- well, you know how it goes. Speaking of which, please raise your hands, step out this door behind me, and line up on the wall to your left. Don't mind the lion; she'll only bite if you do anything stupid, like not lining up against the wall."

There was a long, excruciatingly silent moment following Rose's words as neither of the people sitting at the table moved, both heavily torn between questioning whether this was actually happening to them, and simply going along with it. The one holding a sandwich to his mouth, mid-bite, looked exceedingly pained by this development, which was because he had only just begun eating, and did not like the idea of being held hostage, or being pranked, while on an empty stomach.

"I will not hesitate to shoot if you do not comply," Rose warned, as the two remained still for longer than she liked. "Move now or have 'shot by a stupidly pink gun' engraved on your tombstones."

Both employees immediately stood up and, after the one reluctantly set down his sandwich, walked slowly out the door.

Rose allowed them to make their future decisions in front of a lion, and moved to the second door. As she did so, she heard a faint growl from the other room, and slowly frowned; surely those two had not immediately caused trouble upon leaving the break room?

Carefully, Rose opened the door, and was just in time to catch the same bank employee from earlier reaching under the teller line again, while Nepeta was coiled in a pounce-ready position across the room. He, apparently, trusted the glass in front of him to shield himself from a lion more than an offensively pink gun.

"Hold it," Rose said quickly, gun at the ready, but not quickly enough; the button depressed noiselessly and sent out its silent signal in an instant. The bank teller went rigid at the sound of Rose's voice behind him, and futilely raised his hands again as soon as the button was pressed. "Oh, no," Rose said so that he would not have to. "Do you know what you've just done? I'm asking; nod your head if you understand." Slowly, while still facing forward( and therefore looking at a crouched, impossibly deadly skinwalker of a lion), the man nodded his head up and down. "I thought so. What you did wasn't a mistake; you consciously did something that the woman holding a big pink gun did not want you to, and now she has to decide what to do about it."

Effortlessly, Rose pressed the barrel of her gun into the man's back, which caused him to flinch forward. "The obvious answer, of course, is to shoot you; _someone_ has to be made into an example, given an unforgivable social faux pas such as yours. And, honestly? I can't say I'm against the idea." The man visibly began to sweat in front of Rose, and as he did so she smiled a terrible smile, both cruel and saccharine.  "Fortunately, I have a better one. But first, you there," she said, turning to the female bank teller, "you've been behaving much more amicably than your colleague; I trust you can show yourself through the room behind me to reach the east wall without trouble?" There was a pause as the woman took in what Rose was saying, before she nodded slowly. "Go on. I won't make this difficult for you if you won't make it difficult for me."

More hesitation ensued, but as Rose smiled pleasantly at her, even though it might not have been interpreted as particularly pleasant, the woman moved through the designated door. Some moments later, as Rose continued holding the one bank employee at gunpoint, the other door to the back room opened, and the same female teller stepped out, and moved over to the wall where everyone else had gathered. "Why can't you be more like her?" Rose asked of the man in front of her. He started to make a noise, which could have been a whimper or the start of a fully-worded response; either way, Rose cut him off. "No, don't answer; you've already dug your grave, and now someone's got to lead you to it. And, given the circumstances," Rose added, beginning to gesture towards herself with the hand not holding her gun, "it looks as though that someone will have to be--"

" **Me?** " a deep, ominous voice boomed, seeming not to emanate from any one place in particular, but still filling the entire room with its rumbling volume. Rose frowned.

"Actually, I felt perfectly capable of doing this myself, thanks. Now, if you'd just let me get back to--"

" **Nope!** " the voice boomed airily, as the room's colors began to dim. The lights flickered erratically above, pens and small personal belongings began to shake on their respective surfaces, and a violently swirling black mist began to form in the middle of the room. It drew the color of everything within the bank, leaving behind a muted black and white colorscape, until ultimately coalescing in a tall, black hooded form. The hood completely obscured its face, a lightless void taking the place of a visible head within. Its long, thick robes billowed in an invisible wind, ending in shreds of pure writhing darkness, and slowly, a cloth-obscured arm lifted, revealing a skeletal hand as it did, which pointed directly at the man Rose still had pinned by her gun.

" **You!** " the voice boomed once more, and it was clear now that the robed figure was speaking. The man who had been looking at his phone fainted.

" **It...** " the figure continued to boom, slowly lifting its other arm and skeletal hand, before dramatically pulling back its hood; it revealed none other than Dave's sunglasses-obscured face, retaining its usual colors in stark contrast to the rest of the room, and looking impossibly cocky. " **...is time! _Your_ time, 'cause it has finally come!** "

"I'm sorry," said Rose irritably, interrupting Dave, "who said you had permission to do this? I know it wasn't me; if I had, I would have punched myself in the face immediately afterwards for being so impossibly stupid."

Everyone was visibly stunned by Rose's casual willingness to speak directly to Dave, in all his magically-enhanced theatrics, and exchanged nervous glances from along the wall. Dave shot Rose a deep, unforgiving frown.

" **Permission?** " Dave boomed. He had already grown rather fond of making everyone's ribcage rattle with his every word, and did not plan on stopping. " **I need no _permission_ to escort souls of the damned to their final motherfuckin' resting place!** "

Rose sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Dave, why are you doing this?"

" **Dave? I know no _Dave_ ; I am _Death_ , the one destined to bring an ultimate end to all mortal--**"

"Yes, yes, you've got a nice costume, lightshow, and setup for audio effects going on, good for you -- but this isn't a part of the script. The man I'm sticking a gun into the back of isn't even a part of the script; I don't need  _more_ of a divergence."

" **I obey no script because y'all cannot predict Death!** " Dave said, still booming. Nepeta growled at him from behind, and he spared her a glance. " **What?** " he boomed quietly. She growled again in clarification. " **Pft. Hell no.** " Another growl. " **I said no.** " Growl. " **No _._** " Low growl. " **Fuckin' _no_.** " Long, drawn-out growl. " **You're still wrong, Neps; stop try'na argue it.** "

"Alright, time out," Rose said, not clear on what Nepeta was saying, and not currently looking to pursue it. She shoved the bank teller in front of her aside, who collapsed, shaking, on the floor. "Dave, get over here, and while you're at it, stop dulling all the colors in here; you went through all the trouble to have me agree with you on specifically wielding an unintimidating gun, and now that's back out the window because amid all the grays in here it actually looks intimidating again."

Dave turned back to Rose, and pointed his skeletal hand at her. " **Do you have a Death wish?** " he asked, grinning.

"I do, actually, and no, you're not clever for asking. For starters, I _wish_ for you to get the hell over here already."

" **Yeah, yeah,** " Dave boomed casually, waving his hand dismissively and sliding over on his spidery robes. " **Oh, wait, hold on,** " he said as he approached the teller line, " **you got a little something riiiight...** " Dave raised his still-skeletal hand, carefully moving it forwards, before suddenly smashing it through the teller line's inches-thick glass. Rose reflexively closed her eyes as she was pelted by magically-harmless shards of glass, before opening them again to stare a whole arsenal of daggers at Dave. " **Got it.** "

"The color?" Rose asked curtly, tapping her gun with one hand.

Dave snapped his bony fingers, and the color instantly returned to the room with a soft pop.

"Thank you; and so long as you're already making your presence known, I wish for all my hostages to be bound by zip-ties."

" **Fuckin'** finally!" Dave said, abruptly dropping his voice's enhancing boom. He snapped his fingers again, and at once everyone against the wall, plus the man shivering behind the teller line, had their wrists magically tied together by plastic and nylon.  "Honestly that is the first reasonable bank-robbing thing you've done today, and I'm glad I was around to witness it."

"I did not ask for your opinion on how to rob a bank, Dave."

"You goddamn should've! You've done fuckall for actually _robbing_ this place so far. Have you even _mentioned_ money to anyone in here yet?" Rose frowned, and opened her mouth to respond, but Dave kept going. "No, no-no-no, don't throw your crappy defenses at me; you suck at robbing banks, end of story."

"Dave, you're forgetting that I'm not doing this for the money."

"Like hell I am! I get it; you don't actually _want_ the money, so you're not putting a huge focus on it, but if you're gonna rob a bank then rob the goddamn bank right! You didn't even bring in the duffel bags! Plus your hostage managing skills are subpar at best; maybe you've frightened a _few_ souls in here but you've barely done jack dick to strike fear into the majority of these people. That's why the guy pissing his pants on the ground beside you -- pissing because _I_ scared him, I might add -- pressed the fuckin' button! And of course you don't always have to be frightening -- you can be the reasonable 'let's just get this over with so nobody has to be stressed or struggle' kinda robber, who reminds everyone that they're not gonna be directly affected by the robbery if they just go along with it -- but you can't be both! Don't wave a pink gun around and try to treat someone who hasn't misbehaved like a saint while _also_ reminding people that you'll shoot them if they don't comply and telling them they're gonna be judged by a goddamn lion; mixed tactics _don't fuckin' work_ , because all they do is create one helluva a mess for bank robbers and police investigators alike to sift through!"

"Are you quite finished?" Rose asked, at what she thought was a legitimate half second-long pause in Dave's speech.

"I'm not, actually -- still gotta tell you that you suck at keeping a straight face, unlike yours truly -- but on the subject of being a piss-poor bank robber, the police that your little friend summoned are here."

Rose looked past Dave, out the open door and onto the streets, and sure enough several black and occasionally-also-white vehicles had pulled up, each one featuring a siren, and each releasing several cautious police officers. Curiously enough, although a number of sirens appeared to be actively flashing, and therefore liable to create a whole lot of noise, Rose could not hear any of them. She could not even hear any police chatter, or what she figured might be communicative shouts between them. It was totally silent, and from her magical education she could only figure that Dave had created a sphere of influence for not only sight in the bank when he began his death charade, but also sound. It just happened to be of a slightly different nature in its effects.

"Can anyone out there hear us right now?"

Dave briefly smiled at the question. "They can't; was waitin' for you to pick up on that."

"Mm. Well, Dave, I hope you recall that I _was_ planning on the police showing up, if a little later than this. The ensuing firefight was, after all, the part I was most looking forward to all along."

"Yeah, yeah. Just tell me what I'm allowed to use on them."

"Water balloons," Rose said immediately.

"...Seriously?"

"This firefight is for me, Dave, as well as Nepeta. It is due to the very fact that you could easily incapacitate everyone outside with but a thought that I don't want you to have a big role in it. I'm sure, of course, that you'll start using absurdly over-sized water balloons, or do something equally ridiculous that I haven't warded you against, but for the sake of being a reasonable and understanding sort of person, could you just try not to throw everything into absolute chaos until _I'm_ satisfied with my personal bank-robbing-slash-bullet-exchanging experience, _and_ I've made sure to make it evidently clear to you? When I'm done, you can go wild -- but I'd like to have my own fun before then."

Dave considered this for a long moment, resting a hand on his chin. His robes were still billowing, hands still skeletal, sunglasses still displaying a dull sheen, and eventually between all of these visuals he came to a decision. "Alright," he said, "sure. Genie's job is to have fun, and usually to care only about his own fun, but you know what? I'll consider someone else's fun for a change. You go right ahead and shoot as many of your own kind as you damn well please."

"Thank you," said Rose, and it was perfectly genuine. "That may just be the most reasonable thing I've ever heard you say, and I'll cherish its memory forever and always. Now bring down the sound bubble."

"Sure thing, boss."

Dave snapped his fingers. A soft warble slid through the air as the invisible barrier between the bank's interior and exterior suddenly collapsed, and every audible noise from the outside became apparent. Various policemen and policewomen were shouting this or that to one another, reminding themselves and each other about how to handle this situation, and informing the people who had never done this before as to how it was done. The sirens still blaring mostly drowned them out, and while most of the police officers were courteous enough to turn them off once they pulled their vehicles up and parked, a few kept going, oblivious of the relative silence around them. Most notably, one man's voice, presumably another officer of the law, was speaking above the background din with a megaphone.

"...out without your weapons, and your hands above your head, or we will be forced to come in there and take you down with force!"

"Ah, good," Rose said placidly, "they've already started negotiations while neither of us could hear the other. Sounds typical of New York police, I think. Excuse me," she said to Dave, before carefully lifting herself over the counter with her vibrant submachine gun, casually flying through the broken gap in the glass in front of multiple hostages, and landing just in front of it. Nobody outside noticed the display, so she made sure to think a few thoughts while she walked forward, at which point one police officer after another began to suddenly train their eyes on her.

"Put your hands up!" someone in the small crowd of police officers shouted as Rose approached the door.

"Ah, no thank you," Rose said politely, still holding her gun but not aiming it at anyone. "It would be awfully difficult to hold my gun properly if my hands were too much higher than they are." She looked entirely unphased by all the firearms being aimed at her, which happened to be because she was entirely unphased by them.

"Put your weapon down!" another officer shouted, and it was unclear whether he was supposed to be shouting that, or had simply never been told not to.

"Mmm... I could," said Rose, nodding her head and leaning against the doorway now, "but I've grown rather fond of Miss Flushed here, and I daresay she's fond of me as well. The floor simply won't do for an upstanding firearm of her stature." She patted her gun for emphasis, but still kept it aimed harmlessly off to the side.

"This is your last warning!" the megaphone man shouted. "Surrender now or we _will_ shoot!"

Rose yawned, or more literally faked a yawn, not at all as bored or calm as she tried to appear; she was still far too excited by the prospect of what her immediate future held, especially given that she did not plan on being caught or killed. "I'll consider your generous offer," said Rose, bumping herself off the doorway and back into a steady standing balance in the middle of it. A dozen or so guns adjusted themselves ever so slightly to follow her. "For right now, though, me and my lion would like to have some fun. Nepeta~," Rose called in a singsong voice, before stepping aside behind the wall the doorway was a part of.

Several police officers outside ducked, and for good reason: a fully-grown, unstoppable female lion suddenly barreled out of the front door, and threw itself at one of their cars. A few brave, or possibly stupid officers shot at the lioness, and one was even so lucky as to land a hit, but what no one noticed was that the bullet ricocheted off without leaving so much as a bruise. Instead, everyone had their attention caught by the way the lion smashed into the police car, crumpling it significantly, and knocking it back a good five meters or so.

There was hardly enough time for a stunned silence to follow, as Nepeta immediately lunged for the person closest to her, which happened to be a man with a shotgun, plus a few other toys; ultimately, none of his belongings mattered, because Nepeta destroyed half of them with one swipe of her magically-enhanced claws, then the other half with a second swipe, and in the process drew an excessive enough amount of the color red from the man holding them that he collapsed in an unmoving heap within mere seconds.

As she saw this happen, Rose wondered for a very brief moment whether she should feel bad about willfully endangering so many people who were, ultimately, just doing their job.

Then someone shot her in the head.

It hurt, and arguably it even hurt a lot, but thankfully Rose had prepared for this as, again, this was the part she had been looking forward to the most. Thanks to a well-planned wish, she was as bulletproof as Nepeta, and without having to think about it or focus any inner magic like Nepeta did, though there was still a small sting from the impact. Nothing legitimately wounding, and in fact nothing she could die from -- magic was ridiculously useful like that -- but she could feel it, like a strong flick to the forehead, and it begged retaliation.

Rose took aim and, knowing nothing more about guns than that you could pull a little crescent shape on it to make small cylindrical objects fly out of it at ludicrous speeds, began spraying a magically-endless supply of magical bullets at every lawman she could see.

Small explosions echoed through the air as bullet after bullet was fired by Rose, plus all the people she had to aim at, and the cacophony it produced caused a small panic among the people currently restrained inside the bank. Amid this panic, one of the men who had been waiting in line noticed that the other man, the one who had fainted, inadvertently fell in just such a way that his phone was sticking halfway out of his pocket. This was pretty convenient, because he himself did not have a cellphone, and now he had a means of contacting millions upon millions of people in the outside world, with a little effort. Unfortunately, this was of very little help to him, as the police were already here and, even if he could manage to retrieve it and dial a number successfully, he did not remember the numbers of any of his family members well enough to call them or let them know that he might die soon. Defeated, he slid down against the wall behind him, flopped lamely to the ground on his side, and decided not to have any major character arcs today.

Meanwhile, while taking cover -- because she decided that if she was going to participate in this madness then she may as well try to participate in it _somewhat_  realistically -- Rose noticed that Dave was nowhere to be seen inside the bank. She took another look outside, immediately noticing Nepeta as her skinwalker friend ignored the two tasers that struck her, instead knocking over more vehicles with measured thrusts of her head. This, in turn, trapped several people under them, as they had been trying to hide behind them, and Rose frowned as she heard them scream in what she could only imagine to be horrifically agonizing pain. This sort of thing was always so guiltless in video games; why couldn't this world follow those digital examples just a little better?

Then Rose saw it. She nearly missed it, given its speed, but a water balloon came crashing down, and landed square on the head of someone speaking into a car radio from just outside the car. It splattered against him, but instead of releasing water, it released... something tan, and slightly viscous.

"Dave," Rose said, because she was relatively certain that he could still hear her no matter where he was, "that doesn't look like water."

"That's 'cause, strictly speaking, it isn't," came the reply, echoing slightly in her mind. "You never specified what I had to fill my water balloons with."

"Dave, how can you possibly call a water balloon a ' _water_ balloon' if you've put no water in it?"

"Hey, maple syrup _does_ have water in it. 'Sides, most people don't give a shit when there are little dust particles in the water of their water balloons; don't tell me I'm not allowed to have a few extra atoms and molecules in mine, too."

Rose sighed, shaking her head, but said nothing. At least he had stuck to something simple with his horseshit this time around.

In the time that they had been speaking, five more maple syrup-filled water balloons zipped down, each slightly larger than the last, and each landing directly on the head of someone on the streets below. Besides the fact that this included Nepeta, and very intentionally at that, the syrup was starting to muck up some of the firearms held by the people outside. Guns were jamming, and people were starting to draw back from the situation they seemed unequipped to properly handle.

Rose realized at this point that she had thus far failed to hit anybody, and refused to let Nepeta get all the credit for the current firefight. A few bullets bounced harmlessly off her as she aimed, and Rose further realized that the men and women outside, all of whom possessed legitimate amounts of weapons training, were much faster at ducking behind things or otherwise putting themselves out of her line of fire than she was at firing at them. She kept firing anyway, because she thought this to still be sort of fun; maybe the thought of having your brains splattered out on the pavement behind you while you try to take down a girl irresponsibly wielding an absurd firearm was less fun, but that was why she chose the role of 'bank robber,' and not 'police officer.'

By a lucky stroke, one of the officers outside wound up too distracted by not dying to an unkillable lion to notice when Rose aimed at him, and so when she pulled the trigger while pointing Miss Flushed in his direction, his form quickly went limp, several bullets perforating his head and torso. It felt... less satisfying than she thought it would. She tried again; someone was still stuck with a pistol off to the southwest end of the street, and either trying to reload, or wipe processed tree sap off his gun. Either way, Rose expertly shot the gun out of his hands by complete accident, the same bullet which achieved this ricocheting brilliantly into his wrist. The man collapsed immediately, and was already completely still by the time a few more bullets lodged themself in his body, each of which Rose felt no more satisfied about ejecting from her gun than the last.

"Hm," she said to herself, and wondered if it was simply the gun, rather than the way people were lifelessly falling over, that was unsatisfying. She passively watched Nepeta squeeze part of her body under a car, skillfully lift it while balancing it atop her head, transfer it to her forepaws as she then moved to a tall standing position, and launch it at wholly fatal speeds towards three lawmen who were, even collectively, by no means fast enough to escape her aim. That looked fun, but it also looked like the sort of thing you could consistently do only after a lot of practice. Practice, for the most part, sounded incomprehensibly boring to Rose. But maybe that was precisely what she needed if any of this was to be found fun, rather than reckless and extremely likely to get her shot. She was, she realized somewhat distantly, still being pelted with bullets, and decided to duck back behind the wall to give herself a break from their stings.

At least Nepeta was putting on a good show, if a terribly deadly-looking one. This had not been a complete failure.

"Alright, Dave," said Rose to herself, setting her gun down to stand against the wall next to her, "I'll hand it over to you now."

"Already?" his voice came to her, just slightly disbelieving. "We set all this up, after all that planning on the notepad you stole from me, and you're already done?"

"I am, in fact, already done. This was a very informative test run, though; and now I know just how much guns really aren't for me. With just one attempted heist I have already grown out of my 'inexperienced robber' phase, and now I'm ready to move on. So go ahead; launch whatever you as a genie deem appropriate for putting a good rest to everything outside." It should be noted that this is along the lines of precisely something you should never, ever say to a genie, and that if Dave had somehow wound up in a worse mood, or in fact if Rose's last statement had been a wish, much worse things would happen than what followed. Luckily, neither of these criteria was met, and events unfolded as scheduled.

"Well if I'm gonna do that, tell Nepeta to get inside and close the door. Or don't actually; it'll probably be way more hilarious that way."

"Nepeta!" Rose called, because she did not share Dave's latter sentiments. She looked up sharply from what was at this point little more than shredded clothing sitting loosely around clumps of flesh, the likes of which she had been casually mauling a few moments ago, and Rose waved her over while gesturing upwards. Nepeta ran over, glancing upwards very slightly, and moving just a tad bit faster once she did. She rocketed inside, after which Rose carefully moved to close the front door, all while still being pelted with bullets. She was somewhat surprised to see the bullets not travel through the door's glass, let alone any part of it whatsoever. It hardly looked bulletproof, for one, the glass not nearly as thick as with the teller line, and the metal looking relatively unlikely to stop the barrage of bullets sailing towards her. Still, either miraculously or, as Rose suspected via some shred of Dave's intervention, magically, it did the job, and no matter how exactly that job was done, Rose was grateful for it.

Outside, the armed individuals slowly stopped firing at what they realized was a ridiculously unbreakable door, but after everything that had already happened in the past few minutes, none of them wanted to advance upon it. This was perfectly reasonable, and in fact the most reasonable thing any of them could have done was to have simply driven away as soon as Nepeta made an appearance. Only one person had done this, however, and this was because he would rather be fired than die, and was one of the few to try this early enough to have his car still intact, rather than utterly destroyed by an indestructible female lion.

Abruptly, a foghorn sounded. Then another, and two more almost simultaneously after that. They grew steadily louder, and large shadows grew rapidly on the ground, in spots which people seemed to be doing their best to avoid. This proved to be a wise course of action, as small tugboats soon crashed into these shadowy spots. At least, they appeared to be tugboats, but only until they hit the ground, at which point they appeared to have been tugboat-shaped masses of colored liquid, each of which spreading out in vast multi-colored globs of almost certainly fatal-inconvenience. The liquid shapes crashed down in one huge splash after another, each ending the sound of the horn noise it previously produced, until a total of eleven horns, shapes, and gigantic splashes had run their course, at which point there was only the sound of the fluids outside rushing past one another in large waves. The police sirens had long since been silenced, mostly by a vaguely annoyed Nepeta, and no one caught by the rushing water really had the presence of body or mind to shout anything to anyone else.

Very few people managed to thoroughly escape the sudden flooding, and those that did only managed it by clambering into mostly-intact vehicles, and closing the doors on the people who were not fast enough to join them. These people were thus forced to watch as their colleagues were washed away by an incredible volume of water, all of them, too, quickly going entirely limp the moment any of the high-velocity water struck them.

"Huh," Dave said absentmindedly as he appeared beside Rose, back to his normal body and wearing a red polo shirt with dark grey slacks. "Some people actually got out of the way in time. But, given that it's only because Nepeta didn't wreck all their cars in time, I am not takin' the blame for it."

"How noble of you," Rose replied dryly, still watching the waves flush away across the street outside, carrying dozens of unmoving bodies with it.

"I didn't do it in time be-claws I didn't _have_ time, Dave," Nepeta's natural voice complained from behind the two of them. Dave and Rose turned to face her.  "You ended it super early!"

"Yeah, 'cause Rose told me she wasn't having enough fun, and asked me to."

Nepeta looked to Rose for confirmation, who removed the sunglasses she finally felt were a little too dark for being worn indoors, and nodded. "I'm sorry if," Rose started to say, but stopped as Nepeta put up a hand.

"No, don't worry about it; we came here fur mew, not me. I had as much fun as I could, and I won't let you feel sorry about that."

Though slightly hesitant, Rose smiled pleasantly at the sentiment. "Thank you for the kind words. Ultimately, however, I am still ready to leave; but before we go, Dave, would you remove all the water outside, and while you're at it, take the zip-ties off these people? Then we may depart."

Dave rolled his head around in thought, and stopped with it at an odd angle to the side. "Yeah, sure. Just wish for it first, will ya? That's what makes these things official, and also not my fault when they lead to injury."

"Alright. I wish for all of the liquid you have caused to rain down outside today to disappear; I wish for these poor hostages of mine to be unbound now by the ties you put on them; and I wish for the three of us to be back in the home in my home dimension, _with_ all of our clothes."

"Done," said Dave, snapping his fingers once and removing the maple syrup and tugboat-colored water outside, "done," he continued while snapping the fingers on his other hand, unbinding the fearful bank patrons and employees alike, "and done." With a third successive snap of his fingers, Dave, Rose, and Nepeta all disappeared, leaving in their wake little more than a small number of disgruntled humans who would wonder for days to come what the hell just happened, and why the hell it had to happen to them.


	13. Practice

Gossip, as in the human world, travels exceedingly quickly in the magical world; between these two worlds, however, gossip not only travels even faster in the magical world than in the human world, but is also absurdly easier to dispel.

This, as any able-minded observer may guess, is due to magic. Yet, despite this increased ability to dismiss factual misinformation, a significant portion of magical society has, as with human society, come to particularly enjoy gossip -- even the sort that is blatantly false.

Be it the excitement of speaking behind the backs of others, or the overarching intrigue of factual uncertainty, many magical beings have come to adopt the traditionally-human concept of unconditionally accepting answers to questions they never necessarily sought answers to, and without seeking any clearer answers to them after being given one without a supplementary source of factual reference.

In light of this, there is a 'gossip clause' in a certain rulebook the aforementioned observer may be familiar with, which states that, legally, gossip may be treated as wholly-factual information if it breaches a certain threshold of spread and popularity. This threshold is, of course, left intentionally vague and totally undefined, and in fact the entire clause was yet another clever addition by the chicanery-inclined genies who wrote the aforementioned rulebook that the aforementioned-aforementioned observer should still recall. Knowing this, it should therefore be obvious that this clause was created for no other purpose than the spread of hilarious confusion and absurd misinformation, on top of producing a whole slew of court cases worth their spots on prime-time magical television.

The clause's only caveat is that, if a year should pass before the factual clarity of a given gossip-born rumor has been made widely and clearly known, it will be assumed that the rumor has run its course in terms of effective hilarity, and on top of its legality becoming null and void, the rumor will be dispelled by a team of no-nonsense -- or, at the very least, minimal-nonsense -- genies who will ensure that any and all relevant facts are brought to the public's attention in place of the former rumor, so as to settle and clear the misinformation once and for all.

This proved an important addition to the clause, for without it, magical science would never be able to reasonably progress once too much misinformation had come to pollute the metaphorical 'accepted knowledge' pool, among any number of terrible legal catastrophes that would come of it. Many legal catastrophes still do occur within the year-long period, again resulting in massive entertainment value via the ever-popular magical court cases, but it is not as though any crime can simply be committed by way of spreading a rumor about, say, the changing of an old law, or the introduction of a new one; the clause's threshold of spread is there for a reason and, to amazingly great effect, tends to discourage people from actively committing crimes by way of simple, natural disbelief. Only a good rumor, whereupon it is either believable enough for most people not to question it, or otherwise too difficult to be immediately disproven, can become popular enough for the clause to go into full effect.

Ultimately, when all else is taken off the table, both this clause and its origin present a thoroughly interesting phenomenon, whereby sentient beings have access to factual information, and in fact a tool (magic, in case you missed it) which can easily bring the factual information to light, yet not only fail to use it, but also create unnecessary drama due to this failure, and allow the resulting drama to run rampant among everyone to whom it spreads.

\---

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Dave."

Just before being whisked away in the unfavorable embrace of Dave's magic, Rose had had a sneaking suspicion that, despite her newfound efforts to prevent it, Dave was still going to do something objectionable with her clothing. As fate would have it, her suspicion was entirely valid.

"What?" asked Dave with an extravagant upheaval of his arms, sounding outrageously offended despite having uttered only one word. "I listened! You said 'with all of our clothes' and here we are _with all of our clothes._ I even kept the clothes on us; that's how you wanted them, right?"

"As a matter of fact, it is, and I cannot tell you how glad I am to have before me visible proof that you _are_ actually capable of grasping the absurd idea that clothing might remain on people both before _and_ after being magically teleported somewhere; what bothers me, though, is that I am wearing your clothes, while Nepeta is wearing mine, and you are wearing hers."

Dave frowned at Rose, and shrugged. "Well it's not like I 'n' you could've just worn each other's clothes; then Nepeta would still be wearing the same outfit and that'd hardly be fair to any of us." A short pause waddled by as Rose unamusedly stared Dave down, Nepeta aiding the effort with much the same expression, and he looked back at both of them in incomprehension. Then, suddenly, his face lit up. "Ohhhh wait wait wait -- you mean you didn't want the cross-dressing part to happen AT ALL? Rose you really gotta tell me what subtleties you are and aren't shooting for when you make these wishes; I can't be expected to know precisely what tertiary details you do or don't have in mind if you're not puttin' 'em in the wish."

"Oh, of course not. Because it is far too unreasonable for you to do _solely_ what I wish for you to do, and nothing more."

"You're damn fuckin' right it is; do you have any goddamn idea how hard life would be for us genies if we could only breathe, walk, or talk when someone wished for us to?"

"I can certainly imagine how blissful it would be for the people making wishes. Honestly, a statue of a genie that grants wishes without moving unless told to, which neither speaks nor even wastes the air around them with their breaths, sounds positively blithe."

Some time passed as Dave refused to respond to this, instead producing a pathetic pout at Rose, who took the expression in with a placid one, save for a lone raised eyebrow. Briefly, she began to wonder if, and even futilely hope that Dave had suddenly begun to mimic a statue, but stopped herself before she let any unrealistic expectations get the better of her. "I wish for the three of us to be wearing what we, individually, wore directly before being brought here; no more and no less."

"Fuckin' spoilsport," Dave said as he snapped his fingers, and everyone instantaneously transitioned from wearing someone else's clothing back to wearing their own. "Admittedly though Nep's bra ain't as comfortable as it used to be."

"That's what happens when you pack on the pounds, Dave," Nepeta said casually, if in a teasingly playful tone. Dave shot her an odd look, to which she smoothly added, "As with most skinwalkers, I've kept the same natural form fur a good few decades now; if there's any dif-fur-ence in how you fit my bra, it's because you got fatter, not me."

The pout which Dave had allowed to melt back into a neutral expression abruptly returned. "You know," he said, sniffing sadly for his inauthentic display of emotions, "just because I'm your ex doesn't mean you have to be so heartless 'n' cruel."

"Grow up, Dave," Rose said before Dave could goad Nepeta into a new fight. He immediately ceased his facial contortions, and grew slightly in proportion, which caused his clothing to tighten around him. Rose shook her head. "Close enough. Now, before I forget: I wish to possess limitless flight capabilities; while I still have, admittedly, reached an internal impasse as to precisely what I will be fucking up for the few billion people on my planet, be it social constructs or all of society as they know it, I intend to extensively practice my flight before then so that I will have no embarrassing accidents in public."

"Oh good," Dave said as he snapped his fingers, "you actually haven't forgotten that flying is something you can do. Now I don't suppose you're gonna ask me to coach you on proper flying etiquette or some bullshit too, are you?"

"No," Rose said quickly, then paused, as she briefly considered the logistics of annoying Dave with flying lessons. Given her experiences in his classroom, it seemed unlikely that she would achieve anything more than boring him, and only slightly at best, to say nothing of what heartache he would inevitably give her in return. "I'll figure it out on my own, and if necessary, I will ask you for some pointers afterward on how to achieve the more impressive aerial stunts."

Dave nodded sagely. "Yeah; ironically it is pretty difficult to do aerial autocunnilingus without help."

Rose chose to ignore this, and began walking towards the living room's staircase, her destination being the room which had no gravity. "Please try not to fuck anything up in too horrendous a manner while I exercise my flight," she called back to Dave. "If not for the sake of being a reasonable person, then for the sake of not forcing me to wish a few wishes that make you accountable for all of your actions at all times."

"Will do chief," Dave said with a salute, his hand intercepted on its way to his forehead by a red sailor's hat. He kept the pose until Rose was all the way across the room and up the stairs, at which point he threw the hat aside, and glanced over at Nepeta. She glared sharply back, and left no doubt in Dave's mind that she would tell Rose about absolutely anything mischievous he did, even if it was as small as changing the carpet color.

"So," he said simply as their staring contest marched on.

"So," came the expertly-crafted reply.

"So..."

"So?"

"So!" Dave concluded as he clapped his hands together. "Since you look like you're having a lot of fun that I'd hate to interrupt I'm just gonna go kick off in my room with some ill be--"

Before he could begin to properly allude to the one-person rapping contest he planned on hosting for himself, Dave found his words cut off by three consecutive knocks at the front door.

His head swiveled unnaturally around on his neck in response, until it was completely backwards, at which point he stared at the closed front door for several long moments, mouth still open slightly as it hung on its interrupted syllable.

"Dave, did you invite someone over?" Nepeta asked warily.

"No," he said simply, furrowing his brow as he closed his mouth. He sounded slightly more worried than Nepeta.

The knocks came again, three sharp raps in succession, and Dave frowned.

"You know I very strictly remember not givin' this dimension's address to anyone," Dave said as his body turned around to face the same direction as his head. "But _one of us_ has gotta be the one to tell that to whoever's at the door." Abruptly, Dave bent his neck backwards, until his head was upside-down, facing Nepeta.  "You wanna take the honors Neps, or should I?"

Unsure of whether this was some elaborate prank on Dave's part, and not sure which side she should play to face minimal shenanigans, Nepeta started for the door, and then stopped about three steps in. "You answer it," she decided.

Dave shrugged, undid the drastic shattering of every feasible bone in his neck, and approached the door. A short distance away, he flicked it open with a curt wave of his fingers, and began to speak before it even finished opening. "Look, whatever you're selling, we don't want any of oh shit I recognize you and that means this ain't a social visit."

Standing just beyond the doorway was a young, slightly stout woman with a rough, grey complexion, as though all her skin was made of amateurishly-sculpted stone. Her eyes were an off-putting crimson, burning deep into anyone who gazed upon them, however the effect was slightly downplayed by the even more off-putting grin which cut fantastically wide across her lips, revealing a flawless set of ridiculously deadly-looking sharp teeth.

If these characteristics were somehow ignored, everything about the woman would appear relatively natural, and moreover professional; she had short, neatly trimmed onyx hair, a pristine black suit which had been fitted with her exact measurements, and a formal demeanor to her posture which seemed to radiate the very idea of being above virtually anyone who looked at her.

Peculiarly, as she stood there, both of her hands rested upon a thin red-black-and-white cane which she had stuck into the dirt below and just in front of her; this would not have been especially peculiar on its own, but it was because the 'head' of her cane appeared to literally resemble a head, an ornately-crafted visage of a dragon's no less, and was perhaps the flashiest and therefore most-out-of-place part of her appearance overall, shark-toothed grin and ruby eyes notwithstanding.

"Hello, Dave," the woman said calmly, if with a somewhat scratchy, grating voice. Then, abruptly, the grin she had been maintaining fell into a frown, and the woman shifted her weight as she leaned further on the cane. "Why can't it be a social visit?" she asked innocently, tilting her head and batting her eyes with a pout. "I thought genies _loved_ goofing off and doing as little work for society as they possibly can."

Dave sighed, and rolled his head around his shoulders, catching it on a crick and then grinding it past with several agonizing pops. "Yeah, _genies;_ not the arrogant gargoyles that frequently get off on pestering them. And even without that in mind it STILL can't be a social visit, 'cause if it was I wouldn't have this sense of impending-fuckin'-dread plaguin' my gut."

"Oh, you poor thing," the woman said with a voice absolutely slathered in mock-pity, leaning forward on her cane until at eye-level with Dave's stomach. She gazed at it for some time with a quivering lip of mock-sadness, before drawing back to stand up straight, and very suddenly flicking her cane upwards and around to strike Dave in his side.

Surprisingly, it hit, and jolted him slightly in the impact. She prodded his abdomen, still alarmingly successful in her ability to make contact with his body, and seemed to silently evaluate Dave's torso with her cane. "At least it's accurate. Court summons," she said simply, almost enough so to hide the true weight of what had just exited her mouth. It was to Dave's misfortune that he picked up on it entirely.

"Why do you always hafta tell me in person?" Dave asked, brushing the cane from his side, to which the woman yielded by fluidly swinging it away, jabbing it back into the dirt, and resting both hands atop it again. "I mean besides the fact that you put up this air of always having some serious heaps upon heaps of shit to attend to -- WHICH by the way really conflicts with you always taking the time out of your day to come nab me -- haven't you ever heard of the mail service? See what they do is take anything you've written down for someone, like a friendly ol' message of 'how ya been?' or the ever-more-serious relevant-and-obliged court summons, and then deliver it to that someone; fuckin' magical, right?"

"By its very nature," the woman replied smoothly, "but you can ignore a letter in the mail much more easily than you can ignore a cute girl on your doorstep."

"Oh yeah?" asked Dave, and immediately slammed the door shut -- or, he would have, if the door had not been stopped at the last moment by the cane which was now jammed in the doorway.

For its insignificant width, the cane hardly looked as though it should have withstood the forceful impact of the closing door, and yet it displayed neither dent nor scratch; the door, however, was now slightly chipped.

Reluctantly, Dave pulled the door back open, allowing the cane's owner to retract it, stick it back in the dirt, and smile smugly at him. "You know, for girl who can't technically see you are _really_ goddamn good at putting that cane in places it doesn't belong."

"Dave, who is this?" Nepeta asked from just behind Dave before the woman could respond. Dave turned around, and gave her a baffled look.

"Who is this?" Dave parroted. "What the fuck do you mean 'who is this'; don't you...?" he trailed off, before taking a step back to look between the two of them. The unidentified woman tilted her head to the side again, producing her own quizzical expression. "Oh my god, no; no way. There is absolutely NO fucking way that you two have never met before. ...Is there?" Hastily, Dave began counting on his fingers, silently mouthing the syllables of several dates of the past to himself, pausing briefly on each one until satisfied enough to move onto the next, before he suddenly looked up from his hands with a deeply astonished look. "Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. Holy fucking shit; you two have never met. That is fucking bananas -- that is some motherfucking deep-fried chocolate-covered bananas on a goddamn carnival stick shoved up a monkey's ass. Oh my fucking god."

"I'm Terezi," the woman at the door said neutrally, slowly undoing her head's tilt until it was level. At this moment, she finally stepped inside, curtly tapped her cane against the doorframe to shake off the dirt it had picked up, and closed the door behind her -- all without taking her flat, crimson eyes off Nepeta. "Dave's lawyer."

"I'm Nepeta," came the equally-neutral reply, as she refused to back up and make space for the woman who just stepped inside -- the very same woman with whom she had just started a new staring contest, and who was now less than a foot away. "Dave's ex."

By a very small margin, Terezi raised both eyebrows, but before she could open her mouth to further the conversation, Dave's barking laughter cut through the air, signalling his fall backwards into a hovering flight as he clutched his sides. "Jesus fucking Christ!" he said with perhaps the most passion in the past century of his life, kicking his legs and still laughing between breaths. "Of all the random stupid bullshit I EXPECTED to happen in proximity to me solely on the principle that I'm a fucking genie, this never even crossed my mind! It's incredible! Nepeta, you -- you think what you just said carries as much weight as what she said, but the situation at hand is so much BETTER than that! Holy fucking shit; if I had real lungs I would have trouble breathing right now. This is fucking amazing; this honestly makes the summons worth it now. Holy shit."

"It would seem Dave has never mentioned me to you before," Terezi bravely continued, wielding a tone of voice that tried, and for its part succeeded, to establish itself as serenely professional in the situation. It was a subtle change, yet also drastically different, especially when compared to her earlier mocking tones. "Which I find interesting, because I'm his ex, too."

Nepeta stared on for several long moments after hearing this, tactfully ignoring Dave's laughter and occasional cries of "oh god," or "holy fucking shit." No words came to her, however, an effect which seemed to be inversely related to Dave's current inability to shut up.

"It's like a fucking sitcom! Sweet baby fuckin' Jesus, I don't know whether to be happy or sad that Rose isn't here for this too; this is motherfucking incredible."

"Rose? Is there a third girl in your life, Dave?"

"Okay first off," Dave said while cupping a hand halfway over his mouth, trying to stifle his laughter and finding only limited success, "you and I both know I swung the dating stick WILDLY around before you met me, and if you had absolutely no idea that I might keep tossing it women's way after we broke up then that is your own ignorance at fault. Secondly Rose is literally absolutely nothing more than the annoying human girl who I'm currently playing an extended game of 'magical slave' to; you got that? I repeat: Rose is a human, I am her genie, we are not dating, and for the record I am both single and looking to stay that way."

Nepeta crossed her arms as she looked at Terezi, and then at Dave. "You dated a gargoyle?" she asked, mildly incredulous. She chose not to acknowledge the fact that her curiosity just lost her the staring contest.

"And did the no-pants dance with 'er in the bedroom. Also out of the bedroom now that I think about it."

"Allegedly," Terezi added, which gave Dave pause.

"Allegedly," he repeated, eyeing Terezi from his position in the air. His laughter had subsided entirely by now. "What the fuck does that even mean? You and I both know what happened under the covers, plus on top of the covers, and in places that were nowhere near any covers of any kind."

"We both know what you claim has happened in those places, which is why it is alleged, and not factual. Only one person out of two saying something happened isn't very credible, Dave; it means, at best, that one of those people is lying, and without giving a solid indication as to who. That is, of course, besides the obvious predilection of--"

"Alright-alright-look -- I get it," Dave interrupted with a dismissive wave, "you're a lawyer and I'm a genie and you're going to passive-aggressively lawyertalk your way out of in any way admitting in front of Nepeta here that we bumped uglies by suggesting that I'm a less credible source than you; can we move on? Actually -- can we just go back to how fucking hilarious it is that neither of you has ever met the other before today? Like fucking GODDAMN; that is too great. I am still in shock over here just from my own laughter."

"Did you meet her before, or after meeting me?" Nepeta asked, somewhat suddenly. 

Dave frowned at the question, but Terezi refused to cut in for him even when he hesitated on a response. "Look," he eventually said, "can we just not play the jealousy game? Like -- at all? It has been well past fifty years since I've even come CLOSE to romantically touching a girl, let alone dating or sleeping with one; that in mind, does it seriously in any way matter which one of you entered my life first?"

"Yes," came the simultaneous reply from both ladies in the room.

Dave rolled his eyes, uselessly, and sighed. "Fine, it was before; happy?"

"No."

"Oh and what," Dave said whilst melodramatically tossing his hands up, "meeting you two in reverse order would make everything kittens and rainbows? Fuck, aren't _I_ supposed to be the immature one here? I ask 'cause right now my maturity -- or rather its generally-accepted lack thereof -- has somehow been left undwarfed by the two girls in the room who're gettin' all sour about the past."

"I'm not sour," Nepeta said defiantly. "And even if I am, what does sourness have to do with maturity, when you never told either of us about the other?"

"Oof, well fuckin' golly, now that you asked I hafta confess to having no goddamn idea -- EXCEPT for maybe, oh I dunno, the fact that it's kind of incredibly immature to believe it in any way actually _matters_ that someone you had a relationship with in the past also had a relationship with someone else at a _different_ point in the past -- a point which never even came close to intersecting with your own? In other words, because it doesn't actually fuckin' matter at all? But I mean that's just a personal theory."

"How long?" Terezi asked suddenly, drawing both Dave's and Nepeta's attention. 

"What is with you two and the non-sequitorial questions today? And I mean, how long what? How long between one relationship and the other? How long was I engaging in sexual intercourse with her as compared to your own genitalia's track record? I'll tell you right now that a true gentleman never fucks and tells -- and while I may not be a gentleman I'm ALSO not a fratboy who makes sure everyone around him knows exactly how many people he's diddly-done did or how often. It's kinda why you two didn't know about each other until now, get it?" 

"How long were you with her?" Terezi corrected, no less professionally neutral in her tone.

"I'm sorry; did you miss the part of the past two minutes where I shockingly revealed the fact that information like that doesn't actually matter? Christ, no fuckin' wonder you have those scribes in court writing down everything everyone says when you got a memory like that."

"How long was he with you?" Nepeta countered, looking at Terezi.

"Oh my fucking god you are both complete morons. Girls, if nothing else, you are retroactively proving one thing, and it's that I probably didn't date either of you for your personality. ...Wait," he said to himself, tapping his chin when that sounded worse than he had intended. Neither Terezi nor Nepeta seemed to notice, however.

"I'll tell you how long he was with me if you tell me how long he was with you," Terezi said boldly, back to staring at Nepeta. 

"Deal," said Nepeta as she locked her own eyes back on Terezi, " _if_ you also tell me how many times you slept with him."

A split-second of hesitation crossed Terezi's voice. "Zero times; I never slept with him."

"Bullshit," Nepeta said immediately in reply. "If you dated him, _and_ broke up with him, then you definitely slept with him too."

Dave blinked, uselessly, as he registered what he began to feel was an insult, and also began to take offense to it. Before he could butt in with a retort, however, a hand tapped his shoulder, and the conversation was forced to continue without him as Nepeta pressed for a better answer.

Upon turning around Dave found, without delight, that the hand belonged to a somewhat cross-looking Rose. "Oh; hey. I thought you were flying."

"I was," Rose said calmly but irritably. "But before I could do so for five minutes, let alone the several hours I had originally intended, I heard a bout of psychotic cackling echo up the stairs and into the anti-gravity room which I, at the time, had been inhabiting, and distinctly recognized the cackling as your own. This, as you might imagine, thoroughly prevented me from maintaining any serious peace of mind, and thereby forced me to stop my practice, exit the room, and come down here to see what you had managed to fuck up despite my prior warning. Lo and behold, it appears we have either an uninvited house guest, or an invited house guest whom you never told me about; should I ask which, or can I glean all I need to know from their current conversation about which of them makes a better sex partner?"

Dave considered this, and stared inquisitively at Rose. "I mean... is that a subject that interests you?"

A brief silence followed, during which Rose presented a facial expression designed to convey disbelief, and happened to convey it rather well. Her eyes afforded the briefest glance over at the two arguing by the door, before immediately returning to Dave as Rose replied, "Only in the sense that both of them are of a totally different species in comparison to my own, and therefore may very well have intriguingly alien physiologies; but I don't think that's particularly relevant right now. I still don't know why someone who looks like a literal living statue has shown up at my house, in my private dimension, and I would very much like to."

Slowly, ever slowly, Dave began to grin as he heard this. "I saw that," he claimed with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Rose blinked. "Saw what, exactly? The way in which my face agreed with the words coming out of my mouth? No, obviously not; it seems that I still somehow have not yet made it clear that I am bothered by the stranger in my home, or that I want to know why she's here."

"I saw what you were thinkin'," Dave said, tapping his head and still grinning. "I'll be honest: I thought you were JUST fucking with me every time before when you and Nepeta made kissy faces at each other; I had no idea you were _actually_ unironically into that."

"Are you accusing me of holding a romantic interest for your ex-girlfriend who is, if our conversations have ever afforded me any accurate information about her, well past a century older than myself?"

"Actually I'm accusing you of holding a sexual interest, and for _both_ my exes." Rose stared at Dave, the expression of disbelief returning for a quick followup act, but Dave continued before she could retort.  "You might not have actually realized it with how quickly the thought passed through your mind -- and honestly you're probably just denying this to 'save face' by some arbitrary personal standard -- but believe me when I say I know sexual interest when I see it; I can read thoughts as words _and_ images, Lalonde, and you had a pretty scandalous image pass through your noggin."

"You know what? I'm not going to fight you on this; believe and say what you shamelessly will, but _please_ just tell me why she's here first."

"I am here," Terezi said loudly in Dave's stead, not only because she knew it would take much more than that to pry the answer out of him, but also to prevent herself from talking further with Nepeta, "because Dave needs to attend court, and I am his lawyer."

Rose frowned, looking intently at Terezi for several moments, and then glaring at Dave. "I thought you said lawyers typically have more than one head?"

"Oh my fucking god Rose," said Dave, before putting his head in his hand. "I mean first of all 'typically' means 'not always' and you should really be aware of that if you're gonna keep interacting with me, a genie, but moreover I am just baffled by the fact that you still don't fully realize how often I say something blatantly false. I mean you saw the section about the gossip clause when you were diggin' through the rulebook right? Now you know why it works; people like you will buy any old shit someone verbally sells to them if its sold to them in great enough quantities."

"You say that as though you would still have the same, degenerate role in society if people _were_ more wary with their beliefs."

"Hey, just because I'm a genie doesn't mean I can't feel bad for stupid people. Why do you think I grant so many of them all those wishes?"

"Before you continue indirectly insulting my intelligence," Rose interjected to Dave, before turning to Terezi, "could you tell me what, exactly, Dave needs to attend court for?"

It was at this moment, as Terezi opened her mouth to respond, that a dull _**whump**_ sounded from behind the front door everyone was still standing near, which coincided with said door shaking slightly. Among everyone present, Dave looked the least phased by this development.

"Well whaddaya fuckin' know?" he asked aloud, putting his hands on his hips and shaking his head. "The pizza I didn't order is here! I was wondering when they would start up the program for reading peoples' thoughts to take pizza orders. Hey, door's unlocked buddy! No need to be shy and-slash-or resort to half-assed attempts at knocking it down."

"Dave, do you know who is behind that door, or otherwise have any good reason for inviting them into my home?"

Dave grinned an impossibly stupid grin. "Nope."

Immediately, Rose turned to the door, walked forward, and locked it just as someone tried to turn the knob from the other side. It jiggled uselessly, before being _**thumped**_ with about as much force as earlier.

"DAVID FUCKING STRIDER," came a voice from behind the door, erupting in an obnoxiously loud manner. If its volume was in any way reduced by the presence of a door, or the walls around it, the effect was less than obvious. 

"You know, I always felt that middle name was odd but strangely fitting; and wouldn't you know that the guy who remembers it is none other than Shouty McShortstop."

"I CAN FUCKING HEAR YOU, SHITWAD; MAYBE YOUR SENSE OF OBJECT PERMANENCE ISN'T AS REFINED AS MOST ADULTS', BUT PEOPLE CONTINUE TO EXIST EVEN WHEN OBSCURED BY A CLOSED FUCKING DOOR, JUST LIKE THEIR EARS, AND THEIR MIDDLE FINGERS."

"You know what, Rose? I am perfectly fine with you keeping the door locked. That is a thing I am definitely okay with; in fact I think it's safe to say that from this point on I will never not be okay with that."

"Dave," Rose said with a raised eyebrow, and a certain smirk on her lips which was obscured only by the fact that she was talking, "I am beginning to get the impression that you are and always have been something of a magical slut."

"Ohhhh," Nepeta added in concurrence, cupping a hand to her forehead, " _now_ I get the whole 'haven't touched a girl in fifty years' thing! It's because mew switched to boys!"

"And how long were you with _him?_ " Terezi asked accusingly, to top it all off. 

"Ha ha ha!" Dave said loudly but unenthusiastically. "Oh gosh and golly gee whiz you guys, you really got me with this one! Clearly I have given up my pursuits of women not because I wanted some 'time alone,' but for the bachelor behind the door with poor anger management skills and inordinate volume control issues! But no," he said with a quick reversion to his regular tone, "I'm still heterosexual, he's still a moron who has absolutely no value as a romantic interest, and in fact I'm pretty sure the cranky crab outside is only here because I helped Rose rob a bank."

" _THAT'S_ WHAT YOU DID?!" the voice asked especially loudly, and sounded briefly as though choking on spittle.  "YOU FUCKING ROBBED A BANK???"

"Karkat, c'mon! His name's Karkat by the way," Dave said quietly to everyone in front of the door, hand flat beside his lips to imply secrecy. He then turned back to the door. "Aren't you supposed to keep track of this sort of shit? Do your fuckin' job, man; if you know I did something bad without knowing WHAT it is then you're just as bad as I am!"

"OH MY FUCKING GOD. YOU REPREHENSIBLE MOTHERFUCKING _BEACON_ OF SHININGLY SPECTACULARLY DIPSHITTERY; WHAT THE _FUCK_ IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS WHOLLY-EXISTENT AND REAL CONVINCED YOU THAT USING YOUR MAGIC TO ROB A BANK IS IN ANY FUCKING WAY A GOOD IDEA?!"

"Hey Rose, you wanna chime in? I think he's talking about you."

"AND WHO THE FUCK IS ROSE?"

"Oh, no one, really," Rose said with a tone of casual dismissal, "just the owner of the house, and therefore by association, door, you are currently yelling in front of."

"LISTEN, GIVEN THAT ALL THAT MATTERS TO ME RIGHT NOW IS THAT DAVE IS PAST THIS DOOR HERE, I COULD NOT GIVE FEWER FUCKS ABOUT WHOSE HOUSE THIS IS IF I TRIED -- AND I HAVE EXPERIMENTED WITH HANDING OUT NEGATIVE AMOUNTS OF FUCKS TO PEOPLE! UNFORTUNATELY, TELLING SOMEONE THAT THEY NOW MATHEMATICALLY OWE YOU A FUCK IS SPECTACULARLY LESS EFFECTIVE THAN TELLING THEM TO FUCK OFF, OR THAT YOU JUST DON'T GIVE A FUCK."

"Oh my god; you actually told someone they owed you a fuck didn't you?"

"THAT'S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS."

"Ha! You fuckin' idiot," said Dave, slapping his knee. "You know any day before now I'd've thought I would be SIGNIFICANTLY less happy about Terezi and Karkat showing up in the same place, but this is fucking superb. Hey, Karkat, you got anyone else out there with you for me to laugh about?"

"BITE ME."

"So why are you here, exactly?" Rose asked loudly, to discourage Dave from maintaining his banter. "I can understand the immense appeal of yelling at Dave, but I would hope you have a reason beyond 'just wanting to' when it comes to bothering him, especially when choosing to do so at my current personal residence."

"I'M HERE FOR THE SAME REASON THAT, IF MY EARS DID NOT BETRAY ME, TEREZI PYROPE IS ALSO HERE FOR."

"To compare your sex life with Nepeta's?"

"OH, GO FUCK YOURSELF; I'M HERE BECAUSE DAVE COMMITTED A CRIME, AND HE HAS TO FUCKING ANSWER FOR IT."

"And... he answers to you?"

"I FUCKING WISH! BUT NO, HE HAS TO ANSWER TO THE MUCH HIGHER-UP OFFICIALS WHO ACTUALLY REGULATE THE LAWS HE'S BROKEN, WHICH MEANS HE HAS TO GO THROUGH FUCK KNOWS HOW MANY COURT CASES TO DEFEND HIMSELF; I'M JUST THE ASSHOLE WHO HAS TO REMIND HIM THAT HE IS VERY MUCH _OBLIGATED_ TO ATTEND COURT, AND IF NECESSARY, DRAG HIS UNCOOPERATIVE ASS THERE MYSELF. ALSO, SO LONG AS THIS CONVERSATION IS STILL ONGOING, WOULD YOU MIND OPENING THE FUCKING DOOR ALREADY?"

"Only if you promise to use your inside voice."

"But Rose that IS his inside voice."

"I'll give him a chance anyway, for the sake of saying I _tried_ hospitality before turning him away."

Swiftly but carefully, Rose undid the lock on the door, turned the knob, and pulled it fully open. The sight which greeted her was not exactly the one she expected, because she had been looking straight ahead, and all she immediately saw was the blue sky and green grass that made up the surrounding terrain around her home.

Then she looked down.

There, standing on the ground at a pudgy height of no less than a meter, and looking stressfully outraged enough to successfully detonate his own heart using blood pressure alone, was a troll. Not a goblin, nor ogre, nor even any form of halfling that one might inherently associate with his size; he was a troll, as he had been at birth, and as he would be until death. The only reason Rose knew this was because the rulebook had told her, almost condescendingly so, as it started off each magical creature's designated section with a picture of the given magical creature, so that anyone who did not know what they were could easily find out, and thusly obey the correct rules.

His skin was a mottled grey, similar to Terezi's, but not actually stone-like so much as generally unpleasant to observe or touch; his obscenely black hair, meanwhile, was totally scraggly and unkempt, which, when coupled with the deep yellow sclera and crimson irises of both his eyes, happened to fit rather well with his wrinkly grey suit and ill-fitting tie. As for the rest of his face, a deep and unforgiving scowl had made itself nicely at home across the whole of his expression, creating numerous more-or-less permanent wrinkles as a result, and looking unwilling to leave its territory by any means short of total biological expiration.

"Oh," Rose said placidly as she took in his appearance, less and less pleased by what she saw as more and more seconds passed by. She noted, as something of an afterthought, that Karkat was holding the handle of a black briefcase in his left hand, which looked out of place on the sole principle that the briefcase was of perfectly normal size, and therefore much too big when compared to Karkat's small stature; in fact, given a little effort, it nearly looked as though he could fit inside the entire thing. 

"YES, THAT IS A LOVELY VOWEL. PERSONALLY, I'M FOND OF THE CONSONANT 'F,' ESPECIALLY WHEN COUPLED WITH THE VOWEL 'U', AND SOMETIMES A FEW OTHER LETTERS; BUT--"

"Indoor voice, please."

Karkat frowned, which seemed impossible for him to do any more than he already had, but by God he managed it, and failed to look happy about the accomplishment. He took a deep breath, and slowly let it out, which did not make him look any less angry or stressed, but at least he tried. "But," Karkat said with significantly less volume, eliciting an encouraging smile from Rose, "instead of comparing our favorite letters of the alphabet, may we _please_ fucking continue with getting Dave to put his skinny magical ass in gear, and preferably off to court?"

"He brings up a good point," Dave said, surprising everyone. "My handsomely sculpted ass IS magical," he finished, retroactively surprising no one. 

Karkat approached, walking through the doorway as he menacingly pointed a finger at Dave. "Dave, I swear to fucking god--"

"Wait; you worship Aphrodite now?"

"--if you do not SHUT THE FUCK UP, I WILL slam this briefcase," Karkat said more quietly as he saw the look Rose began to give him, which faded back into a pleasant smile as he lowered his voice, and she closed the front door again, "over top of your pompous, carefree little head SO HARD that you will be knocked across an INFINITE NUMBER of magical dimensions, and land in the one where your trial is about to begin."

"That's not really fair of you to threaten like that when you have a literal magical briefcase in your hand; you're supposed to threaten those kinds of things when they're only metaphors so people'll fear the implausibility instead of the actuality."

"It is PERFECTLY fair to threaten, because if I fucking have to, then you better believe that I fucking will! I am not here to play games, Dave, and I DEFINITELY am not here to give a fuck if you are."

Dave scoffed. "Well, that's just--"

Before he could finish, and for the third separate time that day, a knock came at the door, this one light but extremely fast as it produced seven or so knocks in the span of about a second.

"Karkat," Dave chided, "I thought you said there wasn't anyone out there with you!"

"Because there fucking WASN'T; whatever asshole out there now is--"

"Wait," said a chipper, albeit slightly confused voice, "Karkat's in there too?"

"OH MY GOD NO," Karkat shouted without regard for Rose's indoor voice policy.

"Oh my god yes!" Dave shouted without regard for how much more unhappy this development would make Karkat. He reached for the door, but Rose beat him to it, and locked it, before staring sternly at him. "Rose," Dave complained, "you can't just treat unexpected guests like they're goddamn thugs 'n' criminals!"

"Like hell I can't! I don't give a damn who is on the other side of that door; enough strangers have already invaded my home today, and I would greatly appreciate it if none more flooded in through the front door."

"Oh," said the voice, a little dejected now, but much more audible as its owner stuck his head quite literally through the door. "Is now a bad time?"

For factual reference, the head resembled that of a decently handsome human male, one who appeared to be in his early twenties no less, with deep blue eyes, short messy black hair, and a pale complexion which was matched (and surpassed) only by Dave's.

"John," Dave said earnestly, "you have the most impeccable sense of timing I have ever fucking seen."

"Okay, no. No! Fuck you," Karkat said while pointing to John's head, "fuck _YOU_ ," he said more emphatically while pointing at Dave, "AND **FUCK THIS!** "

In a fit of rage, Karkat violently threw his briefcase onto the ground which, due to a magical enchantment he had had put on it some time ago, unlatched itself, flung itself open, and revealed a magical wormhole inside. That is to say, it revealed a pitch-black void, because while condensed nothingness is perfectly white, sparse traces of nothingness sprinkled in with transpatial openings of any kind are always the blackest of blacks. It was a fundamental rule in magical science.

Karkat's gaze bore into Dave with a searing hot passion, and he pointed with as much malice as he could at the portal. "GET IN THE FUCKING BRIEFCASE."

John's face fell at this, and the frown looked inherently unnatural on him. "You're going to court again?" he asked of Dave. Immediately after asking, however, a realization struck him, and his face lit back up. "Wait, can I come?"

"NO, YOU FUCKING CANNOT."

"Of course you can come buddy! Court's a place open to the public; Karkat's just cranky."

"DAVE, I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD, I WILL TACKLE YOU INTO THAT BRIEFCASE. I'LL USE THE SPECIAL GLOVES!"

"Aw shit; I forgot about the special gloves."

"Special gloves?"

"OH, NO. DO NOT GET ME FUCKING STARTED ON TALKING ABOUT MORE BULLSHIT WHILST DAVE WHITTLES AWAY HIS TIME HERE; WE ARE GETTING IN THE GODDAMN BRIEFCASE, AND WE ARE GETTING IN THE GODDAMN BRIEFCASE _NOW._ "

"Wait, is that a 'we' as in 'the two of us' or is that a 'we' as in 'all of us'?"

"STRIDER, DO NOT--"

"Alright alright!" Dave put his hands up defensively, and they seemed to pacify Karkat for the moment. "Hey Rose, if you want some free entertainment that's basically what's about to go down."

"I thought you liked to make your whole life entertaining?"

"I do, but this is a special occasion."

"I WILL COUNT TO FUCKING THREE."

"Alright, you need to get off your high horse already."

With a well-calculated slap on the back, Dave jolted Karkat forwards, who turned in realization as he fell, held down all his fingers except the middle ones, and shouted, "YOU MOTHERF--" at which point his mouth disappeared into the wormhole, the rest of his body following immediately after.

A glowing red 90 appeared above the briefcase, and began to count down the seconds after its use, and before it would automatically transport itself to its current preset destination.

"Welp!" Dave said energetically, clapping and then rubbing his hands together. "Better get a move on; Karkat always gets way feistier after the first visit, and as much as I'd love to watch him pop back into this dimension so I can push him into his own briefcase again I _think_ that's frowned upon in his culture. Also I have some fans to attend to. Seeya on the flipside!" and Dave stepped into the briefcase, saluting to everyone as he did so, before quickly disappearing under the red 78 which blinked to a 77.

"Uh, hey, sorry for accidentally invading your home!" John said quickly to Rose, before she could fully register the fact that Dave was now out of her private dimension, and would stay that way for an unspecified amount of time. She looked blankly up at John, or rather, John's head, still intersecting the door. "But the briefcase is inside, and I can't reach it from the outside, and... I'll make it quick, I promise!"

Before Rose could deny, or properly consider denying him, John removed his head from the door, dove entirely through the door immediately afterwards, and waved goodbye to everyone still in the room as he landed perfectly inside the briefcase's boundaries, disappearing quickly inside. The red 66 flashed to a red 65 over top of it.

"Well, I'd better join them," Terezi mumbled placidly to herself, and walked over to the briefcase. Before entering, she looked up at Rose, adding with sincerity, "My apologies for intruding on private property; I thought this was some new home of Dave's. It won't happen again, I promise you that." Then she, too, stepped inside, and fell into darkness. The red 42 turned to a red 41.

Rose and Nepeta looked at one another, and after some time, Nepeta shrugged. "Wanna watch Dave own magical court?"

"Well..." Rose said, grimacing as she thought at length about all the luxurious, wonderful peace she would have to practice her flight in while Dave was away. The numbers ticked by as she thought, 40 soon becoming 30, then 20 not long after that, looking unlikely to stop any time soon. "...Sure," Rose ultimately decided; she could always practice later, but she might never again have the chance to see Dave in a professional legal environment, or whatever counted for as much in the magical realm. The 7 above the briefcase glowed ominously at them both, but only for exactly one second; then a new number glowed at them.

Hurriedly, Nepeta stepped in on the 4, Rose jumped in on that 2 that was changing into a 1, and the briefcase automatically closed and was sucked into itself on the 0.


End file.
